Unknown - Game Over

‘Humiliation?’ Issie interrupts.

‘Mortification?’ Josh offers.

‘Simply desolation,’ I say.

I don’t shy away from it. I cast my mind back to Christmas Eve and Libby’s swollen, weeping face. She thought she was telling me something I didn’t know. She wasn’t. She looked just as my mother had the day my father left. I know all about desolation. I know the emotion I’m exposing on stage and I’m not frightened of it. I’m not the one creating it and I have no reason to feel ill at ease. I know that the couples with unfaithful partners are desolate, horrified, mystified, disappointed. But it won’t last. I firmly believe I’m doing them a favour. Better now than after they’ve signed the form at the registrar’s.

We finish the soup and I heat the mince pies and slice the Christmas cake. Issie groans, insists she can’t eat another bite and then asks if there’s any brandy sauce for the pud. Josh has now put himself in charge of alcohol and is as liberal with the measures as he is with his sperm. We’re filthily pissed by 9.15 p.m.

It’s brilliant.

Thanks for the socks,’ he says, kissing me on the cheek and sitting next to me on the sofa. I grin and put my arms around him.

‘You’re welcome.’ I also bought him a number of more desirable pressies: big boy’s toys such as a palm pad, a Swiss Army knife and a mobile phone that you can send pictures on. The gift he liked best was the computer headset that gives you access to your favourite website by talking to your computer. He wasn’t even perturbed when my mother asked, ‘But isn’t there a button you could push instead?’ Buying these presents reaffirmed my belief that even the nicest men are truly incapable of growing up. The socks are a joke. We always buy each other an old-married-couple-gift. We figure that this is as close as each of us will ever get. Josh bought me a perfunctory rolling pin. Not even one of those nice marble ones. He knows I’ve never had a use for a rolling pin and unless someone comes up with a creative way of utilizing one in the bedroom I’m unlikely ever to. We’ve offered Issie the chance to join in our game. After all, if Josh bought two women wifey gifts it would be even more realistic. She’s steadfastly refused, complaining that it’s too depressing a notion. I think she fears she’s tempting fate. The irony is she hopes that one day she’ll exchange such gifts for real.

‘Have you made a New Year’s resolution?’ asks Issie, squeezing her slim bum between Josh and me and wiggling a bit so that we have to move to accommodate her. I slosh some more brandy into everyone’s glass.

‘Oh, you know, the usual – lose five pounds in weight, limit my alcohol units to just twice the recommended allowance and cut back to twenty a day. You?’

‘I’m going to play it cooler with men.’

Josh and I are too drunk to bother to hide our amusement. We both spit out our brandy. Mine is aimed back into my glass; Josh isn’t as houseproud and he splatters his all over my cashmere cushions. I’m laughing too much to get cross.

‘What?’ asks Issie, indignantly. But she knows what.

‘Well, at least you are consistent. That’s the same resolution you made last year and the five previous to that,’ I comment.

Josh is kinder. ‘To be fair, that is the very nature of our resolutions. I mean you always want to eat, smoke and drink less, Issie always wants to love less and I—’

‘Always want to screw more,’ Issie and I chorus.

We all laugh. It’s too true for any of us to take offence.

‘How about we do it for real this year?’ I suggest.

‘I do hope to screw more,’ says Josh seriously. His average is pretty high as it stands – I doubt if he has time for that many more conquests. His behaviour is already quintessentially male. I use him as a role model.

‘No, I mean this year why don’t we resolve to do something different, and really do it?’

‘What, like run a marathon?’ suggests Issie.

‘Yes, if that’s what you want to do,’ I encourage.

‘Is it a good place to meet men?’ she asks. I sigh.

We drink a whole lot more. In fact, we finish the brandy and start on whisky. This is on top of the wine that we drank with the soup. I’ve certainly blown apart my resolutions, but that’s all I’m certain of. Everything else is a fog. I hold my hand out in front of me, but it’s blurry around the edges. Issie and Josh are both being wildly funny, coming up with more and more ludicrous resolutions that we could pledge, but I can’t keep up with their thoughts. My head is smudgy and, try as I might, I can’t seem to control the direction of my thoughts. I keep getting vivid flashes of Ben’s serious and earnest face as he droned on about his girlfriend and whether she’d forgive him for his infidelity. I advised him to keep his trap shut. He stared out of the window as though he hadn’t heard me and asked how could he forgive himself. I must be really drunk because Ben’s face keeps dissolving into Ivor’s and Ivor’s pleading eyes melt into Joe’s. I shake my head. Whisky, the devil’s own urine – it always makes me weird.

‘Learn a new word every day.’

‘That’s easy.’

‘And use it.’

‘Do the three peaks’ challenge.’

‘No way.’

Issie’s ash misses the ashtray she is aiming for. She doesn’t seem to notice but I watch it sprinkle to the floor in slow motion. My eyes see this. My mind sees Ben’s matches scatter as he nervously tries to light a fag. I notice I’m surrounded by drooping tinsel and dropping pine needles.

‘Tell the truth for a week, the whole truth and nothing but,’ suggests Josh. Little white lies are a way of life for him and all philanderers. More natural than breathing.

‘No, that’s stupid, you’d have no friends.’

‘More whisky?’ I offer.

‘Go on then,’ they slur and hold out unsteady glasses.

‘OK, how about I resolve to get married?’

‘What?’ Both Issie and I stare at Josh. We’re dumbfounded.

‘You can’t marry, dummy, you’ve just ditched your girl, remember? And she was great, the best you’ve introduced us to for a while. You are a commitment phobe, remember?’

‘That’s not true,’ argues Josh.

I defend him. ‘Be fair, Issie, he is committed – very much so – in the beginning. It’s sustaining the commitment that he has a problem with.’

Josh scowls good-naturedly. It’s a fair cop. ‘I’m very committed to you, Cas. And you too, Issie,’ he adds. ‘I’ve just never been with the right girl.’

I’m not sure what he’s looking for.

Josh and I are similar in many ways. We’ve both had numerous sexual encounters. The big difference is Josh does believe in relationships and does expect to settle down one day. He’s always telling me so. I don’t know why he still expects this with his track record. For eighteen years Josh has followed a pattern. He is always desperately in love or desperately in loathe. The difference is only a matter of weeks. He bores easily. But instead of thinking that it’s because there is something flawed in the concept of Happily Ever After (which seems obvious to me) Josh insists it’s because he hasn’t had the opportunity with the right woman yet. He repeatedly and forcefully insists that he knows she exists.

‘OK, maybe promising to get married this year is a bit over the top. The best reception venues will be all booked up anyway. I’ll take it in easy stages. I’ll find the One and propose.’

‘Can I be bridesmaid?’ asks Issie.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I be best woman?’ I’m humouring him.

‘Maybe.’ He swallows back his whisky and pours yet another. He swills the amber devil’s pee around in the glass and we silently watch him silently watching it.