about those things?’
‘I … I don’t know … Scarlet, I’m working …’
‘Oh, okay, do you want to talk about it later?’
‘I … I don’t know … maybe … another time …’
I want to cry. Again. I realise we haven’t even had a conversation. Ben has just deflected me. I kick my words at him like weak volleys to his chest. He doesn’t even have to move off his spot. He doesn’t even have to stretch. He just stands there and bats me away with ‘maybes’ and ‘I don’t knows’ and I don’t even challenge him for anything more. A stronger woman would punch that ball back out of his hands, make him stand three feet from the penalty spot, then fire it at his testes. But I am not that woman … I thought that I was, but then I met Ben. If one person shuts down eventually the other one does too. I kick like a girl now.
‘Okay, I’ll see you later then,’ he says, finishing the conversation off.
‘You can’t wait to get off the phone, can you?’
‘No, it’s not that, but I’m working.’
I can hear his mates in the store laughing in the background. I can hear that they are watching Dude, Where’s My Car? again.
‘But … but what about … I just … Okay, fine. I’ll see you later.’
The phone line goes dead.
I don’t know who is more scared, me or Ben? It’s like Halloween round at our flat. But it’s the prospect of staying with him as our relationship rots beneath us that scares me the most.
And what if there is nobody else out there for me? Helen always tells me not to be ridiculous when I say that, but I worry that Ben and I just don’t try anymore, and what will make that any easier with somebody else? Maybe I am just creating problems, but I have a head full of questions. Maybe he’s having an affair? Maybe he doesn’t like sex? Or intimacy? Or anything that means you have to be close to another person? This is the man I want to marry, a man who won’t even give me a hug unless I ask for it and sometimes not even then. Will we even kiss at the altar?
Of course, the thought that constantly lingers is: Why did you leave your wife if you don’t love me? Did you start loving me and then stop? Are you seeing her again? I know they didn’t do ‘public displays of affection’, or ‘pda’s’ as Ben once described them. I thought expressions like that were the reserve of eight-year-old girls. At the time I wasn’t even talking about a passionate kiss, I was asking him for a peck on the lips on a half-full Virgin train. But Ben won’t do public displays of affection, not on a train, not now. The obvious question is of course, why?
But Ben won’t ask the ‘why’ questions either. He says ‘this is who I am’, even if he knows it won’t make him happy. As long as he can’t get upset, then he need never ask ‘Why?’
I don’t want that life. I want a deliberate passionate honest time.
It’s my mother’s fault for calling me Scarlet.
You can’t give a child that name and not expect her to live …
There is a loud cough – somebody is lurking awkwardly at the end of the corridor and has probably heard my entire conversation with Ben, and has certainly seen me standing here crying like some pathetic soap-opera wife.
He’s large, he looks fleshy and heavy like a saturated sponge.
I swipe at my tears.
‘Can I help?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know, maybe – do you think anybody has a relationship where the man comes up behind the woman while she is, say, washing up, and puts his arms around her waist, and whispers in her ear, “You look gorgeous even when you are washing up”? Does anybody have that? Even after three years? Or ever? Or is that just in films? Is that too much to ask? Because that’s what I want. Do I want too much? And also, to have somebody who says nice things to me, like, “You look really pretty tonight”, or “You really make me laugh”, or just something sometime that is spontaneous, you know? That makes me feel wanted, or valued at least. Do men do that, anywhere? Or is that just in romantic comedies? Also, I’d like to be hugged in the middle of the night, and sometimes even woken up to have sex. Does that sound strange to you? Because I know some men who just aren’t interested, at all. I know one man in particular who has explicitly been told that it is very much okay to wake me up in the middle of the night to have sex, and I won’t be annoyed, or tired, in fact I’d love it! I would love to have sex with him in the middle of the night! I have actually told him that he can do that. But he never wakes up! Not only that, he never even rolls over and hugs me! We sleep in the same bed, and he never even hugs me …’
‘Do you hug him? Do you wake him up?’ the saturated sponge asks me directly.
‘I used to. I gave up. It felt like I was in the persuading business. And who wants to feel like they are persuading somebody to hug them? It’s degrading …’
‘Does this man, is this, your husband?’
‘Boyfriend,’ I whisper, ashamed and mildly appalled to be having this conversation with somebody that I assume is a new colleague. But then Helen always says, ‘Scarlet, you’d ask advice from the speaking clock if it would answer you back.’ I suppose I am hoping that soon somebody, anybody, might tell me what I want to hear. Until then I’ll simply add to the weight of various strangers’ experiences that I am amassing in my head.
‘I think that …’ I see his thoughts flash across his wide face like a red line that signifies a heartbeat across a monitor. I see him actually thinking about what I’ve said in an effort to answer it, and not just recoiling at the emotion of it all. He and Ben would not be friends. Ben would probably accuse him of being gay. Of course he might be gay, but he seems too big … He starts to speak, then stops, then starts again.
‘I think that if I was in bed each night with a woman that I loved, I would want to hug her, and kiss her, and … certainly wake her up if she was offering what … has apparently … been offered. I would certainly do that. And if I loved her, of course I would want to hold her. Who else do you get to hold like that? Not your mum, or your friends. Who else can hug you like that? I mean, not all night, a man needs sleep, but certainly I would want to, and would hug her … Oh Christ …’
I am crying again.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask, regaining control and sweeping a finger beneath each of my eyes to mop up my tears.
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean why? I’m not undercover police …’
‘Gavin,’ he says, with a degree of suspicion.
‘Okay, Gavin, who maybe has drugs in his pocket or some outstanding parking tickets? Do you think I should break up with him and go speed-dating? Except my best friend Helen said her cousin went and she said the whole process made her feel like she was a human iPod. You just keep skipping past really good songs, thinking the next one might be better …’
Gavin looks a little bewildered. His cheeks are flushed, as if he has just climbed three flights of stairs, or necked two glasses of red wine in quick succession.
‘I’m the stage manager,’ Gavin says.
‘Okay … does that mean you aren’t allowed to answer questions about speed-dating?’
‘I don’t mean to upset you again … or more … but you can’t be in here if you are nothing to do with the theatre and … I’d rather take it up the arse from a seven-foot convict with the nickname Big Greased Shirley than go speed-dating.’
‘My God! You’d hate it that much? Do you think that’s a masculinity issue? That you don’t want to be judged by women? I mean, it could be okay … some people say it’s fun … speed-dating … not taking it up the arse … but some people say that’s fun too … I’ve