12 Months PART E

Chapter 9

‘Every you Every me’ – Placebo.

I’d chained smoked my way through six cigarettes before Jimmy’s arrival. I jumped at the sound of him knocking at the door, fearing the bailiffs had beaten him to it. He barged past me and threw himself on the sofa, frantically waving his hand in front of his nose.

‘Phoawww,’ he remarked, ‘is the bloody house on fire?’ I had to admit, it was a little smoky in the lounge. That was one of the problems with my one bedroom house. There was nowhere for the smoke to go. I’d made a pact with myself I’d pack it in when I’d finished decorating the place, I’d just never followed it through. Rebecca knew I smoked before she’d moved in but that didn’t stop her making a song and dance about it every once in a while. One particular night I’d had two cigarettes whilst watching the TV and had gone to bed just before she returned from a clubbing escapade with her mates in town. Despite it being 1.30am in the morning and sub zero temperatures outside, she opened all the windows and spent the next half an hour going up and down the stairs huffing and puffing and spraying air freshener everywhere. I pretended I was asleep. Now though I didn’t suppose it really mattered.

‘We could pretend to be out,’ I mumbled weakly.

‘Nope, you’re only going to prolong the agony you coward.’ To my surprise Jimmy was being quite sensible about the situation. ‘Just kick the bitch out and get it over with.’ Then again, maybe he was less interested in being supportive and more intent on being part of the whole misogynistic demise. He’d have kicked her out without hesitation. Her stuff would probably already be on the pavement, in bin liners if she was lucky. What’s more, he certainly wouldn’t have needed a mate for moral support. That said, he had turned up, which to me at the time meant everything. I paced around the lounge, continuing to smoke whilst Jimmy helped himself to the TV remote and was soon engrossed in Football Italia.

Two cars eventually pulled up outside. The onslaught was about to begin. I opened the door. Rebecca’s mother bundled her way past me in much the same way Jimmy had done. She was closely followed by her troops, namely Becci and her Dad. She stood in the middle of the lounge with her hands on her hips, surveying the task in hand.

‘Right, I’ll start in the kitchen,’ she bawled. Acting on her high-pitched war cry, her troops rallied into action and the onslaught began. It was like standing in the middle of a whirlwind. The operation had been planned with military precision. She started loading everything in the kitchen into boxes, and I mean everything, even stuff that was mine. I felt powerless. As I went to say something I looked round to find her Dad disconnecting the video recorder. Becci was clattering through the drawers of my computer desk. Jimmy remained transfixed on the telly throughout.

‘I don’t think there’s anything in there that belongs to you. I’ve already packed your things into that box over there.’ I pointed to a pile in the corner. At that, her mother stomped in from the kitchen.

‘Huh,’ she said, ‘I think we’ll be the judge of that.’ And then they were both at it, rooting through my drawers with vigorous gusto. ‘Are these yours darling?’ she said holding aloft a half empty plastic carton of drawing pins.

‘Yes,’ said Becci and into the box they went.

‘What about this?’ We had now moved on to lot 124, a ball of BlueTac. The answer was in the affirmative and it too was packed.

‘I’ll go get your things from upstairs,’ I said gingerly. No-one appeared to hear me, so I sloped off to pack up the duvet cover Becci and her Mum had bought behind my back after I’d said I didn’t like it, along with all her lotions and potions from the bathroom. It wasn’t long before I heard someone coming. It was Becci. She stood in the doorway looking down on me.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said, ‘I thought we might have a couple of moments to ourselves.’ At that she undid her blouse and bra and knelt down beside me putting my hand to her breast. ‘Touch them,’ she said softly, ‘they’re all yours, and they always will be.’ She lowered her head and kissed me passionately. It was like a surreal dream. Here I was with my ex-girlfriend playing doctors and nurses to the backdrop of her parents banging and clattering downstairs whilst they riffled through my gear and Jimmy continuing to rant at the television. For a few brief moments I went along with the charade, selfishly realising it might be the last chance I got. My head soon began to spin with confusion however and I pushed her away. I made myself presentable and went back downstairs. Both cars were by now packed to the gunnels. Her Dad continued to tinker with the video, much to the annoyance of Jimmy who’d repeatedly told him to stop bobbing up and down in front of the television.

‘Do you want to take the video?’ I questioned, noticing there didn’t appear to be enough room for another paper clip in either of the cars let alone a video recorder.

‘Want to take the video? Of course we want to take the video, it’s our video,’ her mother piped up. That wasn’t strictly true. It was a beaten up old thing that had belonged to her brother until he’d given it to me as a birthday present. I wasn’t going to argue. Eventually they managed to free the video and made their way to the door.

‘Thank your lucky stars we’re not taking more,’ her mother remarked. I didn’t respond, I wouldn’t have dared, but it didn’t stop the anger from welling up inside. Was I supposed to be grateful? ‘She’s been to a solicitors, haven’t you darling,’ she continued, glancing at Rebecca. She nodded reluctantly, almost ashamedly. I imagined her parents, or rather her mother, had put her up to it. In fact I would go as far as to say that her statement should have been, ‘we have been to a solicitor.’ They were the only people I knew who had one, unless you include the bloke who always acted on behalf of the Mitchells in EastEnders. That aside, I’d never actually known any real people to have one.

‘Oh,’ was my gargantuan response.

‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘luckily for you, the mortgage and all the bills are in your sole name (yes, lucky old me) so we have no stake in the house.’ I couldn’t believe she’d been to see a solicitor. Rebecca had lived here rent-free for nearly twelve months, her only contribution towards any of the costs being to buy the weekly shopping. Any major purchases such as furniture, carpets and the like had been paid for by me and anything she’d had any financial input towards, and more besides, had now been stuffed into their cars. Yet here she was telling me I was lucky not have to sign over half the house? It struck me she’d used the word ‘we’ … ‘we’ would have no claim to the house. Aha, so it had been a joint effort. Was I going to let this woman speak to me like this in my own home? I looked at Jimmy; he’d leapt to his feet as Juventus slotted another one home. He lifted his shirt over his head in celebration revealing his rotund midriff. I’m sure it was seeing Jimmy’s wobbling gut that put me off forming any sort of cohesive argument in my defence. No, I couldn’t blame him. I was chicken. All I could do was stand there and take it. My expression erred on the side of gratitude rather than anger. I put it down to relief, knowing that the uncomfortable experience was nearly at an end and the bailiffs would soon be on their way.

‘But then,’ she continued, ‘I suppose you knew that when you set up this little deal.’

No actually, because I didn’t venture into ‘this little deal’ as you put it with the belief it was eventually going to go tits up. More to the point, I was the only one with any fucking money and I seem to recall that instead of being happy for your daughter on the night she moved, your words to her were something along the lines of ‘If you move in with Connor, you move back in here over our dead bodies’. But that doesn’t matter, we brush all that under the carpet because the upset and tears caused by your outburst were forgotten two days later when you threw a big ‘making up’ party at your house complete with the obligatory banners and balloons. And you stand there, like Lady Muck, with the cheek to make out I’m the one who’s being unreasonable.

‘Come on, we’re going,’ she barked and with that her little followers frogmarched passed me. I shut the door in relief. Jimmy seemed oblivious to anything that had gone on. I wandered upstairs and rang Stacey’s house on the off chance we were still going to the cinema that afternoon. Brenda seemed overly keen to give me the phone number of the friend’s house where her daughter was staying. Reading far too much into things once again, I took this to mean that Stacey had filled her mother with good vibes following our initial meeting and that Brenda approved. I eagerly rang the number. There was no answer. I waited a few moments and rang the number again. This time a female voice answered.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, yeah, my name’s Connor. I was told I might be able to get hold of Stacey on this number?’

‘Stacey?’

‘Yes, you’re friends with her aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I haven’t seen her since Friday night when she left the club with…’ she tailed off.

‘With who?’

‘With one of our other friends,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘I think we’ve met before Connor, a long time ago. I’ll be sure to let her know you called.’ Her voice sounded sympathetic.

‘Right, OK then, thanks very much,’ I rang off.

‘Got anything to eat?’ Jimmy shouted up the stairs. Unfortunately for him, but ultimately me, the kitchen appeared to have been the worst casualty of the bailiff’s onslaught. I looked in all the cupboards and drawers to find what they’d left: one kitchen knife (the blunt one), a cheese grater and one of those things to separate the egg yolk from the white. I always found the last item in particular, to be tremendously useful in the kitchen.

‘Errm well, even if I had anything there’re no saucepans to cook anything in, or plates to serve it onto or knifes and forks to eat it with.’

‘Good, let’s go down the pub then and get some tucker.’ Jimmy had actually come up with a good idea. He even treated me to lunch. It was then we began probably the most sensible conversation we’d had to date.

‘Bet you’re glad that’s over,’ he blurted, his mouth half full of chicken madras.

‘You could say that,’ I sighed, ‘I don’t want to have to go through that again in a hurry.’

‘Nah, I bet you don’t.’ He was now chomping on some naan bread, ‘I hope for your sake the silly bitch doesn’t try a pull a stunt like she did last time.’ He paused for a moment to take a swig of bitter. ‘Leave the stupid cow to die this time. I would.’ He was referring to the time I’d tried to break it off before. We weren’t living together then, but the day after I said that enough was enough (my reasons had been the same) I got a phone call at work. I couldn’t make out who it was at first, there was just a lot of wailing and moaning but I got the gist of what was being said. It was Rebecca.

‘I can’t live without you Connor. You know where I am and you know … what I’m going to do,’ she kept repeating. Her voice was terrifying. The hysteria and panic was something I had never heard before. Nothing I said calmed her down.

‘Bye,’ she whispered, ‘I’m going to do it.’ She put the phone down.

I don’t mind admitting I was frightened. I wasn’t sure whether she was really going to do anything but I wasn’t prepared to take the risk. I was a trainee at the time and my boss sat at the opposite desk. He knew something was very wrong by the time I came off the phone and he let me borrow his car (his Sierra being quicker than my Fiesta). Not that it really mattered though; the traffic was horrendous. There was a spot on the top of the cliffs where we used to hang out. I guessed, rightly or wrongly, she was there.

The car skidded to a halt in the gravel car park at the base of the cliffs. A number of old age pensioners sitting outside the little café enjoying cream teas and the like, tutted disapprovingly at the youth of today as they saw me speeding by. I spied the telephone box from where I assumed she’d made the call. A Telecom man had taken it to bits and wires were hanging out all over the place. I ran over to him.

‘Excuse me, does this phone work?’ I said panting.

‘Huh?’ said the man unhurriedly, not taking his eye from what he was doing.

‘The telephone, does it work?’

‘Are you taking the piss mate, does it look like it works?’ He must have seen the distress on my face. He changed his tack. ‘What’s the problem son?’

‘I had a phone call from someone about…’ I looked at my watch hurriedly ‘forty minutes ago and I wondered if they were still around.’

‘Nope, I’ve been working on this for over an hour.’

‘Are there any other phones round here?’

‘Nope, the only other one is on the other side of the cliffs in the next bay.’ Shit, I was in the wrong place. It must be at least a thirty-minute walk to get there; I’d have to take the car. ‘I can phone if you like,’ he said, seeing the desperation in my eyes, ‘see if anyone’s there.’

‘I thought you said it was broken.’ He didn’t reply but slotted a card into the guts of the phone and dialled a code, presumably to connect him to the phone he’d been speaking of. We stood there for a while in silence.

‘Well,’ he said replacing the receiver, ‘there’s no-one there now.’
I thanked him for his efforts and ran back to the car. I didn’t know where I was going but I just knew I had to get there fast, if that makes sense. I think it’s known as panic. Whatever the reason, something made me look back up the road as I got into the car. Rebecca’s car was parked half way up the street. She was there after all. I speedily made my way up the steep grassy track to the top of the cliff. The pensioners continued to monitor my progress. It must have been about half a mile to where the cliff flattened out at the top. I hadn’t gone more than 200 yards when I had to stop and catch my breath. Taking in deep gulps of air with my hands on my knees, I looked up to see how much further I had to go. It was then I saw Rebecca making her way back down. I pushed myself on to get to her. She was no-where near the edge and didn’t look suicidal in any way (apart from the fact she was sobbing her heart out) but I was filled with relief. I grabbed her tightly, both arms locked around her upper body. I couldn’t let go, even when we were making our way back down the cliff path (I made sure that she walked on the inside of me and away from the edge, just in case). The pensioners were in for another treat as they witnessed a girl with a blotchy red face, crying her eyes out, seemingly being bear hugged by the boy racer idiot who’d shocked them all earlier with his Dukes of Hazard style entry to the car park. They probably thought I’d made her cry, but then in a way, I suppose I had.

‘Do you want an ice-cream?’ I asked as we neared the café at the bottom. It was if I was speaking to a little kid and that having an ice cream would make it all better again.

‘No,’ she sobbed, ‘I just want you.’ Never have I heard something so touching and yet so vomit-inducingly slushy at the same time.

Even more upsetting were the antics of the next day. I’d phoned her mother as I thought I had a duty to tell her what had happened. I was not going to shoulder this responsibility on my own. I arranged to see her the following lunchtime and spent quarter of an hour explaining exactly what had happened. I thought maybe she should be aware of her daughter’s actions. After pouring my heart out and telling her how terrified and disturbing the whole episode had been, she looked me straight in the eye and said dismissively, ‘Well, you didn’t think she was actually going to do it did you?’ She gave me a patronising smile. In hindsight I wouldn’t be surprised if her mother’s nonchalant response was down to the fact that she’d put her up to it in the first place. Whatever the case I should have formulated some kind of response.

‘Fine, maybe not, but the next time your daughter calls me from a phone box on a cliff top crying her eyes out, intimating that she’s going to throw herself from the top, I’ll just get on with my work and hope she changes her mind; I’m not going to be made responsible if anything happens.’

In reality I left post haste with my tail between my legs. In view of her mother’s dismissive stance and feeling I was left to carry the responsibility alone, I patched things up with Rebecca on the proviso she never tried to pull the same stunt again.

‘Look,’ Jimmy continued, ‘why don’t you come to footy tonight. We’re one short at five-a-side. I could do with a laugh watching you lumbering around the pitch.’

I smiled thankfully and accepted his generous offer.

I must have been more out of practice than I thought. The game was no more than five minutes old when the ball came to me on the edge of the opposition’s area. I swung my right foot with so much enthusiasm that my left foot came about six inches off the floor. Having missed the ball completely I landed awkwardly and my ankle buckled beneath me. It ballooned to the size of a baby elephant and I was carried off the pitch, yelping like a small child. I spent the next four hours in the local casualty department having torn the ligaments in my ankle. It was the final nail in the coffin of an unbelievably crappy weekend.

Chapter 10

Weeknights were spent mainly at my parents’ house. Mum enjoyed having the family, albeit only the three of us, together at dinnertime and it meant I didn’t have to cook. Mum’s offerings were much more inviting than my usual burnt meals for one in any case, and it saved me from hobbling around the kitchen on my slow-to-recover foot. I even got my washing done on occasions.
We had a heart to heart one night. She tearfully told me she’d missed having me around. Despite only living down the road, I hadn’t seen much of them whilst living with Rebecca. It was good spend time at home again.

On one particular evening, Stacey’s was the only car parked next door. I took the opportunity to find out what the hell was going on and get the books back she’d borrowed. I knocked the door. No answer, but I could see a shadow bobbing in the hallway through the frosted glass. I knocked again, harder this time. A burly looking guy in his late 20’s opened the door just enough to see who was there. He was enormous. I don’t mean he was fat, just very broad and, despite being over six feet tall myself, the time it took to scan up from his torso to his face made me uneasy. He had a fairly dark complexion and his face was scarred and pitted. He’d either picked all his chicken pox as a kid or had been in a lot of fights. I assumed it was a bit of both with the emphasis on the latter.

‘Yeah?’ he said through the crack in the door.

‘Is Stacey in please?’ I asked nervously.

‘She’s in the shower,’ he grunted, closing the door as he did so. I pushed my hand against the door to stop him.

‘Wait!’ It was as if I’d announced I’d been sleeping with his mother. A fiery hatred burned in his eyes. I was glad the door was virtually shut. I thought it best to just say my piece and shove off. I neglected to ask the questions I’d originally wanted the answers to.

‘Can you just ask her to pop my books back next door?’ His face was emotionless, continuing to stare at me with foreboding eyes. ‘I live next door and she borrowed a few books from me.’ I assumed this animal was the reason things hadn’t gone according to plan with Stacey. Coward as I am, I hoped saying I was just the bloke next door would help deflect suspicion. There wasn’t really anything to suspect, but I thought I’d err on the side of caution. ‘I just want my books back,’ I said pathetically as though I was a kid having kicked his ball over the fence. He shut the door in my face.

I spent most of the next week feeling sorry for myself. Keeping my foot elevated for ridiculous amounts of time and chatting on the internet didn’t do much to inspire me. Chatting to Kristy was probably the only thing that kept me sane. We exchanged a few photos and rambled on about nothing in particular. She was actually really easy to talk to. I know that might sound weird seeing as how you’re typing, but believe me, online chats can dry up as easily as real life conversations. She insisted I sort myself out with something exciting for the rapidly approaching weekend. I rang Ellie in the hope I could go up to stay with her; a house full of nurses for a couple of nights was surely better than any medicine. Unfortunately she couldn’t put me up. She’d organised some antics with Bob and so my next best offer was treating myself to a thrilling afternoon at Dean Court watching AFC Bournemouth with Jimmy and Alan.

It was cold, it was wet and I wondered what the bloody hell I was doing there. I shuffled from side to side in an attempt to ease the discomfort of my ankle. Alan and Jimmy obviously knew all the terrace chants. I stood there feeling as though everyone in the stand was staring at me. I could sense them nudging each other and pointing.

‘Ere, that bloke over there ain’t singing George,’.

I soon realised I needed glasses. I knew when Ian Cox and Mark Stein had the ball. One was tall and black, the other, a black midget. That isn’t meant to sound racist, merely an example to show how bad my eyesight was. Thank Alan for small mercies. He kept me up to speed with events on the pitch with his constant commentary. He took being a football supporter to another level. He could tell you the match statistics from the last time these teams met; any midweek team news, including fitness and form; the highlights from the reserve team game, because he’d been to watch; the name of the person dressed up as the team mascot Cherry Bear on that particular day. I mean how would you know that? More to the point, why the hell would you want to know that? It’s not exactly going to come up as the £32,000 question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I can’t imagine Chris Tarrant leaning forward in his chair, ‘Take your time now Alan, you’re free to walk away with £16,000. You’ve used your 50/50 and ‘ask the audience’. You’ve phoned your Mum for the capital of Finland, but take a look at this for a guaranteed £32,000. Who was dressed up as AFC Bournemouth’s club mascot, Cherry Bear in their home fixture against Notts County in the 98/99 season?’ Imagine Mr Tarrant’s surprise as Alan excitedly screams out the answer before the four options have even come up on the screen. Classic television.

I may have got wet, squinted for ninety minutes and had a crap burger but at least it had got me out of the house. I returned home to find another note on the doormat.

‘To my dearest Connor; I can understand you being mad with me; at the time I thought I was being strong moving my bits out but now it’s hit me and I feel a bitch leaving you with nothing. I really don’t know what to do with my life, Connor. It feels so empty without you. Please, please don’t hate me forever; you are still my life and soul. Can we see each other? It is my birthday after all. You’re still the best in my eyes. Love Becci xx.’ Her new address and phone number were on the bottom.

Now Jimmy would have done one of two things. Either screwed the note up and thought no more about it or rung Becci and told her in no uncertain terms to fuck right off and leave him alone. No, actually, he’d have probably have fucked her and then told her to fuck off. I, being the sucker that I am, did none of these things. I rang Rebecca and arranged to go to the cinema.