he thought we were free to sleep with other people. Which begs the question why he didn’t mention doing it, ever.’
‘He was sneaking around like your bog-standard shitbag and now he’s gaslighting you.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Making you think you’re going mad, making you think it was your problem.’
‘It’s true we never said “What are the rules on sleeping with other people”. He had said he didn’t believe in monogamy as the only way to live, but you know … I didn’t think it directly applied. He’d met my friends, my family. God’s sake, how are you meant to be totally go with the flow, ultra modern, no pressure and find this basic stuff out at the same time?’
‘This is the gaslighting. You’re questioning yourself. It’s him who’s put the goalposts on wheels.’ Clem sucks on the straw in her gin and tonic, then grimaces. ‘He called you “the Waitress”. He never missed a chance to act like he was better than you.’
‘I thought he was being … I don’t know, light-hearted.’
Clem widens her eyes and Rav and Jo still can’t meet mine and I realise this is Robin’s legacy – me uncomfortably working out how I accommodated and rationalised a lot of crappy behaviour that wasn’t remotely invisible to anyone else. And forever hating Ben & Jerry’s.
‘And you knew the woman?’ Clem says.
‘Lou’s his PA. They’d had a thing before but I thought it was long over by the time I was around.’
Robin said he and Lou had slept together once, ‘in the day’, which I took to mean a long while ago rather than the timing, but who knows.
I was taken aback when he mentioned it, as I’d spent a whole evening in her company thinking theirs was a friendly working relationship and it hadn’t once crossed my mind. Not that I’m saying attraction is an exact science but Lou is my complete physical opposite: long wild brown curly hair, a nose stud, knobbly knees in laddered patterned tights and a pair of silver glitter-crusted clumpy shoes. I’d taken an instant shine to her.
It always causes some mental realignment when you discover someone has been where you have been.
‘She was cool about it, she’s really cool,’ Robin said, which I translated as: there were no consequences when I made it obvious it meant nothing.
Robin had paused.
‘That’s not a thing for you, is it? Who’s been with who?’
Yes it’s a thing for me like it’s a thing for pretty much everyone, that’s why there’s so many pop songs about it.
‘No! Just surprised that’s all. Wouldn’t have put you together.’
‘I dunno if you’d call it together. We ended up having a shower in an Ibis in Luton after a food fight, it seemed the next obvious step. Certainly not much other entertainment in Luton.’
I flinched. In this moment, I definitely wasn’t the cool girl who wanted to hear the details and I didn’t like the way I felt Robin was trying to portray me as uptight and conventional. Even then, I could tell he was getting a kick out of it, congratulating himself as an erotic buccaneer, compared to Georgina the square.
So when he added: ‘Would you rather I didn’t say, in future?’ I instantly replied: ‘No,’ and changed the subject.
I didn’t ask if he’d mind if situations were reversed: when I unpick why, it’s because it’d mean either he was a hypocrite or he was totally without jealousy, which might be great for him but sort of flat for me.
Why didn’t I tell Robin that his free love, free’n’easy approach wasn’t for me? I was scared of seeming like the parochial fiancée in Billy Liar, a woman stuck in the past who represented the opposite of everything exciting.
And I was scared my expectations were never going to be met. But I’ve learned it’s better to have unrealistic expectations than none at all.
We’re two drinks deep and having established I don’t mind if they slag him off, the Robin roast is now a marinated deep smoke over a pit of coals. By the end of the night he’ll be nothing but pulled brisket in buns.
I feel a peculiar mix of gratitude and shame that I don’t feel sad, or any urge to defend him. It should be as if my heart’s been torn out and spat on. I only feel baffled, humiliated and empty. The empty was there before Robin, and he was a distraction from it.
‘Stand-up comics are often terrible people,’ Rav is saying. ‘Think about the personality type who decides to stand alone on a stage and say funny things and risk no one laughing. It’s for the maladjusted. The sad clown cliché. I’d rather spend time at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest than backstage at the Comedy Store.’
‘You might’ve told me this before I dated one,’ I say.
‘I was going to, but like a scrubber you disappeared off into the night with him before I could give you my professional opinion. Afterwards I judged it unwanted.’
It was actually Rav’s fault that I’d met Robin in the first place. Rav had got us tickets for an open mike night. Robin was the last act, and by far the best. He did an excerpt of his show, I’m Not Being Funny But. It was much more of a storytelling style than those who’d leaned on the mike stand and chucked out one-liners, which got tiring after a while.
Afterwards we found ourselves in a group in a late-night hotel bar with him and two of the other acts, a turquoise-haired plus-size woman dressed as a fighter plane pin-up, and a depressive man from Solihull who wore a pork-pie hat. I had finally felt part of a Sheffield creative quarter.
Robin was tall, with a mop of telephone cord-like hair and small, shrewd blue eyes that contrasted with his red tartan shirt. He’d paced the stage rubbing his head, radiating a nervy energy. I could still smell the sweat from performance on him.
I had realised I was excited to meet him. He felt like something different from the usual men I encountered. Going places. Things to say. Knew what he was doing. I decided to wait for my moment to get his attention.
Robin held his mobile horizontal at chin level – a sign of a right tit I should have recognised, if ever there was one – and read a review aloud to his agent. They’d started the tour in London two nights previous, and apparently a verdict had just dropped.
‘McNee has an acute ear for the casual linguistic stupidities that infect daily life. He tries on a Stewart Lee-ish irascible rancour towards celebrities, his professional competitors, and even his audience, but it gradually slips over the line from knowingly self-parodic to plain self-indulgent … he becomes the very blowhard he seeks to send up. His ego is a drunk driver, but if his better instincts take control of the wheel, he could be something quite dazzling. You tell me, Al, is that praise or not?’
Pause.
‘Yes I know, I’m asking you which of those two ways you take it.’
Pause.
‘… Fair enough. I want to fold this cutting up and insert it into “Lee Hill” using a litter-picking claw.’
Pause.
‘No I know Chortle is a website and there isn’t a hard copy, you might be missing the point.’
He hung up. Everyone was quiet. I wasn’t nervous, mainly due to two powerful drinks that tasted like evil jam, with fat Morello cherries on sticks in them.
‘A review with the words superb, dazzling, and “acute ear”. I’d take it,’ I say.
Robin looked at me.
‘What about my ego being a pissed driver?’
I shrugged.
‘You can’t do it without ego. There’s no way Richard Pryor or … Lenny Bruce didn’t