Belinda Missen - Lessons in Love

My words were a starting gun, and he began faffing about, hands searching, darting across the bench to a roll of kitchen towel when it had been discovered that, for once, the cleaners were early and had made off with the dishcloths. He thrust a fistful of paper towards me, his arms bobbing about in suggestion that, just maybe, he’d like to be the one to blot me.

‘Don’t you touch me.’ I held an arm out to stop him moving closer. He placed the towel gingerly in my hand. ‘Or I swear to God, you’ll never ever have children.’

‘Well, that’s kind of important to me, so I’ll just throw paper at you from here,’ he teased. I watched in shock as he began folding a square into a paper plane. Was he serious?

‘Why don’t you just go away?’ I spat. ‘Flutter off into a cloud of mothers somewhere. I’m sure they’d be happy to have you.’

‘You really are an angry little onion, aren’t you?’ Marcus turned on his heel and left me, sopping wet in the middle of the staffroom.

Grappling for the kitchen towel as it rolled away, I unravelled another length and began dabbing it against my front. People came and went, curious onlookers joked about there being better ways to score a caffeine hit and, no, I didn’t really need any help. Thank you all the same. While it felt like I was there forever, the eyes of the world watching my embarrassing spectacle, it had only been ten minutes or so when the door swung open. Penny stood there looking both confused and worried.

‘Ellie?’

I looked up from my shirt, which I’d pulled away from me to better survey the damage. ‘Yeah?’

‘There’s someone here to see you.’ The waiver in her voice was not indicative of someone excited for the pub in about seventy-six minutes’ time. I, on the other hand, was already doing the mental maths of just how much I could afford to drink.

I groaned. Now what?

* * *

‘Eleanor Manning?’

Each step towards the office felt wobblier than the last and, by the time I pushed through the door, I’d imagined every single irrational thing that it could be. My brain was trying to juggle with the idea that my car had be stolen, or Dad having had an accident overseas. I’d have to roll up to a consulate somewhere and bail him out. Or, worse, Mum really wasn’t joking about visiting and had been sitting out in reception the entire time. Maybe my grandparents had risen from the dead and were about to serenade me with some ‘Thriller’ moves of their own. The last thing I had expected was a divorce lawyer.

Stupid, I know.

Looking every bit his serious self, dressed in an overpriced but under-tailored suit, was Bill Napier. He’d been by Dean’s side every time there was a deal to be done, hovering downstage with his billowing sleeves and sweat patches. Today was no different.

‘Is this a joke?’ I snorted. ‘Bill, you know who I am.’

He pulled a yellow envelope from his breast pocket. He wore enough rings you’d be mistaken for thinking they were knuckle-dusters. Then again … ‘Your ex-partner is applying for divorce—’

‘Hang on, hang on.’ I held up a hand to stop him. ‘Is this the done thing? We’ve only been separated nine months. Is this correct?’

‘Are you refusing to accept the paperwork?’

‘What? No, I’m simply asking a question.’ My breathing became shallow, more pointed with their anger. Was this guy serious? I’d done the Googling; twelve months apart and then you could apply for a divorce.

Bill placed the envelope on the bench beside me and repeated, ‘Eleanor Manning, your ex-partner is applying for divorce, and I am serving you with the divorce application. Your court date is listed for Friday, 9 November 2018.’

Apparently, he was very serious. Like another man I’d recently dealt with, he turned on his heel and walked away.

‘Here, close your eyes. Let me do your eyeliner.’ Penny leaned in, the heel of her hand pressed into my cheek. ‘We’ll make you all beautiful so we can go out and forget all about this week.’

‘You know, I’m not actually upset about the divorce. That’s not what’s upset me.’

Penny stood back and looked down at me. ‘She says after draining the hot water because she was too busy in the shower crying.’

Okay, so that part was true. It had been a long week, and what else was a girl supposed to do? I trudged home smelling of old coffee mixed with the tang of deodorant and late-afternoon body odour, and I know of nobody who’d agree that that was in any way appealing. My shoes had felt two sizes too small, I hadn’t got through my To Do List, and the divorce papers were a metaphorical weight I couldn’t be bothered carrying. So, I did what any overly stressed girl would do – I slipped under the showerhead and had a good old-fashioned cry.

‘It felt good,’ I said. ‘Sometimes you just need to release those tears.’

‘I know.’ Penny removed her hand and switched to the other eye. ‘But, now, we dust ourselves off, we get ourselves fancy, we drink some cocktails, and chase some tail.’

‘It just felt like one thing after the other this week,’ I said. ‘Niggling little things, but I’m sure Bill is what happens when the universe sends someone to laugh at me. She tends to do a lot of that lately.’

‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t mind the universe falling on him, to be honest,’ she mumbled.

‘I just feel like a failure.’

‘Ellie, the fact that you are upright and have found gainful employment suggests otherwise. You are smart, you are funny, and you’re a wonderful teacher of words.’ Penny stood back and admired her work with the make-up brush. ‘Fuck, you’re so cute. Who are you going home with tonight?’

I snorted. ‘Nobody I have to see over the coffee urn on Monday morning.’

‘How long has it been?’ she asked. ‘Am I allowed to ask that?’

‘Let me think.’ While she faffed about my hair and tossed me a lipstick, I tried to do the mental maths. ‘Uh, well, he kind of overshot the mark on his last attempt, so that was over before he even got his pants off.’

She passed a lipstick over her shoulder. ‘Are you joking?’

‘I wish I was.’ I peered into the bathroom mirror. ‘All right. Actually, my birthday before last.’

Penny snatched her phone up from the counter and opened an app. ‘Sweetie, that’s fourteen months, two weeks, five days.’

‘Well, then, so it is.’

‘Also, we’re super late. Let’s go.’

* * *

Today was always going to happen, whether I lobbed the grenade first, or he did. There was no point at all being naive about it. Perhaps my anger was more that Idiot Features had got in first, and I was just feeling a wee bit competitive about it all. After all, he was the one who’d done the wrong thing but there I was, being served papers at work like it was me who was the bad guy.

All I wanted to do tonight was have a few cheeky drinks and forget real life for a few hours, make some new friends and maybe catch up with some old ones.

There was one clear-cut memory of the pub that teased itself out from the others as we trounced up the stairs and in through the double doors. It was the last week of high school, and a group of us thought it would be great fun to see out the year with fake IDs, cheap wine, and hangovers. It felt like only yesterday and, here I was again, ready to throw another night the brew fairies’ way.

‘Isn’t this weird?’ My eyes zipped around the room, not sure whether I did or didn’t want to see any familiar faces.

Penny grabbed at my hand and pulled me up towards the bar. ‘Yes, but we’re much cooler now.’

A modern foodie flair had replaced the worn yellowing brickwork, Eighties architectural tubular steel, and dart boards. Still, the faces remained generically familiar. The more things change, right?