It is January 2008. I have recently moved out of my matrimonial home for good. My wife and I have been breaking up carefully for the past twenty months or so officially, but for much, much longer in reality, for many years without acknowledging it, only reading the control panel correctly when the nose was already pointing earthwards in a dive no pilot could avert. We crashed. My spouse spent six months out of our home, then she returned, both of us shell-shocked and in need of familiar comfort from the only person who understood what the other was going through. But now it is my turn to be out, walking down new streets, resigned despair turning surprisingly quickly into manic hopefulness. This time, it’s over. I know that and I have been drinking heavily for weeks. I have never felt more alive.
When you’re drunk and more alive than ever you find yourself open to possibilities you may not have otherwise considered. I am the bank that likes to say yes and I say yes to everything, always.
One cold night at the start of this year I say yes to free cocktails at some bullshit Q magazine Hard Rock Café party with mini patties, chicken wings and a grasping indie-rock band trying to woo drunks. I don’t remember the music, but I remember the drinks. I arrive ruddy-faced around show time, simmering after a few after-office lager looseners in the Social, and demand a premium wristband that allows access not just to the complimentary beer and wine, but to cocktails. I get the wristband. I get the cocktails. I talk to a girl serving chicken wings about why she pierced her tongue. I drop and smash a tumbler on the dance floor. I shovel a line up my hooter in the toilet and upon my return to the fray I slip down three stairs, regain my balance and make a fabulous joke about the tumble to my fellow revellers. Turn the ambient sound down, overlay with some minor-key synths and you are watching a government infomercial about the perils of binge drinking at Christmas on public transport. Always use the handrail when using the moving escalator, please.
Later, I find myself in a fancy hotel bar full of candles and marble. I am holding the floor back from colliding into my face by leaning hard with my palms on a glass table. I have already stolen a packet of Marlboro Lights from the bar top and described my career as a ‘natural thief’ in detail to surprised, teetotal work acquaintances.
I turn to my right and – what’s this? I’m kissing someone. Or am I? I fade out and in and out and in and out of the embrace, the face of the person I am kissing morphing into a dozen different shapes and personalities, until I am lost in some kind of dreamy reverie about all the people I am kissing: friends past and present, old lovers, new lovers, imaginary lovers, a former schoolteacher, perhaps, and then … and then I start to drift off. I wonder if I’m actually at home, asleep. Could be. I pull back. Dizzy, I look hard at the bemused face in front of me. Oh, it’s Janet, who I know on a cordial basis. She works on another floor in my building and we have no history beyond casual, convivial chat when our paths cross on stairs, in lifts, by desks. There is no chemistry between us that I have ever previously been aware of.
Yet, I say that there is chemistry. There’s chemistry, Janet. You must know that. You must. She doesn’t know that, she says. She’s never known that. How could she? We barely know each other, let alone our feelings for each other. Oh my God, she says. Are you sure? Her bemusement levels are breaching the levee, but I just nod sadly, seriously. It’s true, Janet. There’s something between us. Something real. It’s very dark in here, I then think. Who am I speaking to? Oh, it’s Janet. Janet. Ah. I’ve always liked you, Janet. Shall we leave?
We leave. Janet climbs into a cab, wisely closing the door sharply behind her. I smile. I wave. I take a little tumble backwards into a man with big hands. I ask him, the doorman, for a light for the first of my stolen Marlboro Lights. He gives me a whole box of matches and I do my best to thank him. He tells me to watch my step and I give him a punchy little salute. I think I call him sarge. And then I move off into the early, crisp Tuesday morning, the week stretching deliciously out in front of me.
I walk in a general westerly direction, striding as if starring in a movie focused on the trials of a sailor on twenty-four-hour shore leave. I slalom. I clutch on to railings and scaffolding. I rest for a moment against walls and in doorways as the undulating world takes shape before me, wishing I had the power and persuasion to hail a cab, but that may take another thirty minutes of this faltering homeward passage to master. And then I text Janet. You know, to smooth things over.
Nice to see you to see you nice Janet.
That’s what I text into the void. ‘Nice to see you to see you nice Janet.’ That should cover it. I march onwards into the enveloping orange-blackness of the city’s night …
Three weeks later I am standing at the bar in the Social, sucking down a fresh brew with friends. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to see the name Janet flashing menacingly on its face. I put the phone back in my pocket and allow it to finish buzzing. Moments later, a double buzz. A message.
‘Oh hello, Ted.’
The gentle pause. The drawing of breath. That doesn’t sound like the Janet of Cumbria I know. That is Home Counties Janet: pony trials and the WI and a hand on the shoulder in the waiting room when the diagnosis is bad, very bad. It’s a recognisable tone, however. Who is this, I wonder?
‘This is Janet Cleese-Stenley.’
Oh yes, that’s who it is. Excellent.
‘You left a message, I think, on my home phone recently. You may have sent it as a text because it was delivered by an automated machine? Anyway, I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to work out it was you, but if you ever wish to see me please feel free to get in touch again. OK? All right then, Ted. All the best and do take care.’
Janet Cleese-Stenley, great to hear from you, you, my former therapist, who clearly proved so useful in resolving all those issues during the course of our five meetings in 2002, back when I first left my wife. So that’s where the message arrived: I’d sent a text message to my ex-therapist’s home phone, at 3 a.m. And the message that would’ve been read out in disjointed electronic speech, as Janet Cleese-Stenley slept soundly by her husband’s side in their well-appointed terrace house, perhaps ringing out on the answerphone machine to jog them awake? It was this: Nice-to-see-you-to-see-you-nice-Janet.
I decide not to return her call.
And we slide the vault’s lid shut once more.