Unknown - Game Over

‘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 I try to explain that the advice is thirty years out of date.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 her face settles into sad acceptance. Weary of fighting with me, she grudgingly laughs, ‘Oh, OK, you are horrid.’

We all go back to my flat. Josh immediately goes into the kitchen to see what he can rustle up. My fridge is surprisingly well stocked. This is because my mum has a key and must have popped round today. There are fresh vegetables, leftover turkey and a load of mince pies. She’s also left a small Christmas cake on the coffee table. Josh starts to chop vegetables and Issie opens some wine whilst I call my mum to thank her and wish her a Happy New Year. By the time I get off the phone, Josh has made a huge pan of thick vegetable soup. We sit with bowls on our laps in front of the TV.

‘Didn’t your mum want to come round?’ asks Josh.

‘No. I invited her but she said that she and some neighbour or other are going to put their feet up in front of the TV.’

‘Bob?’ offers Issie.

‘Could be.’ I shrug. Sometimes it seems as though Issie knows more about my mother’s life than I do.

It’s a big night for me. The wedding episode of Sex with an Ex is playing out as an hour special. Half an hour on the wedding, then half an hour on the usual programme. The fact that I secured an hour spot on primetime TV on New Year’s Day is hugely exciting. For all Issie and Josh have made it quite clear that they don’t approve of the programme (which I think is hypocritical of Josh, considering his behaviour was inspirational to the original concept), they both have to admit that it is compelling. Neither of them has missed a show.

‘Why is she wearing a leopard-skin tracksuit?’ Issie asks.

‘It goes with her hair,’ notes Josh. ‘Why do they do it at all?’ he adds incredulously.

‘Fame,’ I assert happily. ‘It’s compelling.’

‘She’s awful,’ says Issie, ‘she keeps clapping herself. Why does she do that?’

‘Too much orange squash as a kid,’ I offer.

The scene cuts to some moody music, something that builds to a crescendo. The audience, in its entirety, is with Tom. They want him to resist. He doesn’t. The cries of protest and defence of the infidel, Tom, bleat from the TV. ‘It meant nothing – it confirmed the reasons we split up.’ His girlfriend ignores his wails and punches him.’ WhoooooWhoooo.’ The audience erupts. Turning at once. Deciding within seconds who they’ll support. Who they’ll hate. They know they should be supporting people because they seem nice – they ought to prefer the sweetest personality. But invariably they cheer for the bird with the biggest tits or the guy with the cheekiest grin. They whoop and cheer and sing and goad and cry and console and condemn in the space between one commercial break and the next. The overwhelming emotion is fear.

‘It’s fascinating,’ comments Issie. ‘The men justify straying on the grounds that it’s not about love and the women that it is.’

‘I don’t find that fascinating. I find it predictable. I’d like a woman to come on the show and say she fancied a shag,’ I argue.

‘It’s unlikely though, isn’t it? You’re the only woman I know who underwent an emotional lobotomy at the age of seven.’

‘Shush.’ I’m not embarrassed by what she’s saying, but the adverts have finished and we’ll miss some of the show with her chatter.

His face is grey and his lips tight. He’s sweating from every pore. His eyes are darting left to right. He doesn’t know. He can’t be sure. Has she slept with her ex or not?

‘You know how we could improve the show?’ I ask rhetorically.

‘Pull it,’ Josh suggests.

I fling him a filthy look. ‘No. We should have two signature tunes, depending on the outcome. One for jubilation, the other for…’