Mhairi McFarlane - It’s Not Me, It’s You

‘… Yes?’

‘Where did you get your dress? I love it.’

Relief flooded out of Delia like rainbow cosmic energy.

‘URBAN OUTFITTERS! IT WAS AGES AGO THOUGH, SORRY! Hahahaha,’ she squealed, while the girl looked politely startled at Delia being drunk. ‘Maybe try eBay?’

The girl smiled, clearly thinking: and maybe Betty Ford for you.

Even if she wasn’t going to London, Delia thought, as she trudged back into the office, shaky with fight-or-flight adrenaline, she couldn’t pretend Newcastle felt the best place for her either.

Delia lay in the avocado bath and braced her toes on the taps, as she’d done a thousand times in her youth, looking at her burgundy nail varnish. She always wore dark red on her pale feet; it reminded her of a childhood fairy story about drops of blood on snow.

The house was quiet: Ralph was on a shift and her parents were at their weekly pub quiz.

In her reflection in the plastic-framed mirror at the end of the tub, she could see the hollows of her eyes as charcoal smudges, after flannelling off her black eyeliner. She’d worn make-up like it for so long, even she thought she looked peculiar without it, like a newborn mole.

Hmmm. Not so newly born any more. Not long till thirty-four. Delia hadn’t wanted to think about this until now, but there was something about being naked that forced her into stark honesty.

Here was the thought that had buzzed like a wasp at the edge of her thoughts, ever since the revelation about Celine.

If she wanted kids, Paul was still probably the safer option than re-launching herself back into the dating scene in her mid-thirties, hoping to find another solid prospect.

Even if Delia met someone else soon – and this seemed unlikely – she had to factor in the time to get to know and be sure of him, before taking the step into parenthood. She hated to give in to outmoded ideas about being a single woman of a certain age – no choice should be made in desperation, or it wasn’t a choice at all. She’d be the first to tell a friend she had all the time in the world. But you said things like that to make those without a choice feel better. If she was honest, her situation as it stood felt perilous.

As she and Paul discussed the other night, where would you even start, dating now? Deeply unfairly, at thirty-five, he was still young enough to be the cool rather than creepy older guy to a twenty-four-year-old. He could wait till she was, say, thirty and ready to be thinking about a family.

Delia didn’t have similar leeway.

She’d been out of circulation so long, the mindset required to make polite conversation over a gin and tonic with a stranger you might want to sleep with seemed utterly alien and overwhelming.

Before Paul, she’d pinballed from boyfriend to boyfriend without ever having to consider the getting of them. They’d always been there when required, and sometimes when not required. Modern dating, it needed practice – it wasn’t something you could start from cold and expect instant success. You weren’t without baggage, and neither were your prospectives.

Emma was long-term single, with the odd dishonourable exception of posh, brusque men she met through work and had brief, brusque flings with. Delia had always shivered slightly at the brutality of it all. Emma had been dumped a couple of times by social media, seeing Harry or Olly with someone else in a ski resort selfie. (Though Delia put these cruelties down partly to Emma’s self-confessed questionable taste in men.)

Emma had been looking for her Paul online and through friends-of-friends all her life, and had yet to encounter one.

Then there were further hurdles, if Delia miraculously hit it off with a potential in a drink at The Baltic. New person sex. Gulp.

Delia looked down at her body.

She hadn’t needed to assess its aesthetic value quite so bluntly before: it did its job, and it was loved. She might want a flatter stomach, but as long as there were A-line skirts, creamy blue cheese and Paul around, it wasn’t a priority.

Now she wondered at what restoration work might be needed before it could be opened to the public again. She gazed despondently at the white orbs of her breasts, bobbing in the water. In clothes, they got a fair bit of interest. Double D-cups were popular enough with menfolk.

However, cosmetic surgery had come in during Delia’s decade off the market. Frighteningly, she had seen the word ‘saggy’ cruelly hurled at women she thought of as aspirationally pert. A larger chest size inevitably meant she had some ‘hang’, when out of a bra. The thought of pinging the clasp on one and being assessed by someone she didn’t know all that well was frightening.

Delia shivered: Emma had once been hard-dumped right after the first time with someone. Imagine that. Even Emma’s buoyant demeanour had taken a bad knock.

Delia wasn’t thin, or sculpted. She had little silvery shoals of stretchmarks on her hips. And she had hair.

Would being a natural redhead startle some? Given that extreme waxes were the near-norm? She used to get teased for having a Ronald McDonald wig in the games changing rooms at school. She didn’t fancy discovering the prejudice was alive and kicking, two decades later, right when she and what she could quaintly call a new lover were about to get down to it.

A new lover – it seemed impossible. Paul and Delia. Delia and Paul. They belonged to each other. Yet he’d loaned himself out.

She added more scalding hot water to the bath, to make up for how cold she felt.

Was this how it worked, coming to terms with an affair – like passing through the stages of a death: anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance?

Yes, a bereavement was exactly what it was. Accepting that the old relationship with Paul, the one where he’d never be unfaithful and she had unshakeable belief in him, was dead. If they got back together, it would be a new relationship. Many features of the old, but not the same. Realising that gave her much sadness, but some peace.

What if she went to London? Got away from all this and gained some perspective with distance? Only that would mean becoming unemployed. As much as she was indifferent towards her job, Delia couldn’t quite countenance it.

Delia dipped her head under the water and let her hair float in a warm halo of snakes around her skull, thinking of herself as a modern-day Ophelia, submerged in Radox pine bubbles. Her feelings for Paul hadn’t vanished over the course of one ugly evening.

She could see a time she would go back to him. She also knew she had a giant lump of stone inside her stomach, a dead hard weight of hurt and resentment that would have to dissolve, slowly, until she could feel love towards him again.

Delia didn’t know how or when or if she’d be able to rid herself of it. It seemed a big enough challenge to have admitted that she would try.

‘We’ve had a major security breach and this Peshwari Naan pest has ratcheted up to Threat Level: Amber,’ Roger barked at Delia, causing everyone to look at them both, obviously wondering how words in their native language could be strung together to form something so incomprehensible. ‘There have been some developments.’

Delia looked at him blankly.

‘Are you, or are you not meant to be updating and monitoring our Twitter feed?’

‘Yes,’ she said, bewildered.

‘When did you last tweet?’

‘Erm, an hour or so ago?’

‘Then log on to our account,’ Roger said, leaning over Delia and heavy-breathing decaf Caffe Hag down the neckline of her sweater. He adopted the hand-on-hip lean-in pose, with the self-importance of a security spook briefing the POTUS at a COBRA meeting.