Don't You Forget About Me Page 32

‘That was very far from a tank.’

Lucas glances at me and looks away.

I have déjà vu, all of a sudden. The guarded expression on his face resembles a look he once gave me, when we had to jointly present an essay on ‘Is Wuthering Heights a story of redemption or despair?’ I quoted him without his permission, veering off script to get a laugh.

His face said, back in that classroom: ‘I’m not sure who you are.’ Only why feel that now? Of course he doesn’t know who I am. Maybe people have the same face all their life, the same tics, and I’m overthinking this.

‘Was that story true, or did you make it up?’ Dev says, jolting me back into the room.

‘All true, unfortunately. I’d have preferred not to have lived it.’

It was a well-worn anecdote, polished up. That’s the problem with my life: it produces too many anecdotes and not much else. No one wants to be miserable in order to leave a funny-poignant memoir, like Kenneth Williams.

‘It was about this vegan, Luc …’ Dev says, but Lucas has suffered selective hearing, ignoring Devlin in favour of an incoming customer. Even in my euphoria, I have a little flicker of Why can’t he be pleased for me?

‘Here she is!’ Rav leads Clem, Jo, Esther and Mark up to the pumps. ‘Really good choice, George, told with perfect timing.’

They collectively burble about how much they enjoyed it and I bask in it. I know I have to subtract percentages from the whole for 1) their knowing me, and 2) their being glad I didn’t stuff it up, but some of this is authentic admiration. I glow, an unfamiliar feeling which feels like a shaft of sunshine after weeks of rain. For once, I am not in the middle of the mess, but centre of a tiny triumph. I have done something valuable, using my own initiative. I feel … oh this sounds daft, but I feel like an individual for a change. My workplaces only ever usually afford me the identity of ‘love’ or ‘darling’ or ‘the blonde lass’.

My friends pile off to the snug; even Esther and Mark have decided to stay for one more ‘as we paid the babysitter ’til ten’. All is well, and calm, until I’m flipping the tap on the fourth European lager in a round for a man in a FAC 51 t-shirt, when the door opens and a windswept Robin saunters in.

He’s in a funnel-necked navy coat I’ve not seen before and is wearing an air of cocky insouciance I’ve definitely seen before. He’s with a short, balding man in a camel Crombie coat who, to my eyes, whispers quiet wealth, in a ‘London’ way. Robin surveys the room in that way he has, as if he is both apart from and above the company, and it’s the job of the contents of the room to impress him. Natural self-consequence.

He sees me mere seconds after I see him, no time for any ducking or dissembling.

‘Oh! Hi,’ Robin says, eyes widening. ‘Suddenly she is nowhere, and she is everywhere.’

I gather myself, passing the change to Mr FAC 51.

‘Hi.’

‘I’d heard it was good here,’ Robin says, as though I was going to accuse him of stalking.

‘You heard right,’ I say, in android wench tone, making it clear I don’t want personal interaction. ‘What’re you having, gentlemen?’ I continue, now false-bright.

‘Is this how we’re doing it, Georgina?’ Robin says. ‘Strangers. Yet more estranged than strangers, as I don’t get to introduce myself again.’

The man he’s with looks from Robin to me and back again and I grind my teeth at how inappropriate, and inconsiderate, Robin always is.

I pass an empty pint glass from palm to palm and say: ‘Lots of real ales.’

Robin sighs, leans back, arms spread, both palms braced on the bar, as he surveys the pump labels. My back stiffens. Never mind Keith befouling the premises, I feel as if Robin is going to do some territorial crapping of his own. He’s an invader.

‘Think I will try a pint of First Blonde, thank you. It seems fitting. Al?’

Ah, this must be his agent. I sat at Robin’s elbow during enough fraught to and fros over whether his fellow panellists commanded a higher fee, while he held his phone like it was an After Eight mint.

‘Same, thank you,’ Al says, awkward.

I pull the pumps, wait for it to settle, take the money, pass the change, top them up, with Robin’s eyes locked on me the whole time.

They’ll have one drink, maybe two, I tell myself, then go. Breathe. I serve them with a broad smile that I’m determined to keep fixed on my face for the duration of Robin’s visit.

The table with Rav, Clem, Jo and my sister and brother-in-law is at the far side, and they are yet to notice Robin’s presence. I find my phone in my bag, text Jo: ‘Robin’s here. Tell everyone to act indifferent, like I’ve barely said a word about him since we broke up xx’

And to think I thought this shift would be stressful for an entirely different reason.

Yet the speed with which Robin sinks his beer, and is soon up at the bar holding foam-streaked glasses for refills, is not promising. He was always a lightweight who got bladdered easily.

Kitty hisses: ‘Georgina, Georgina, that’s Robin McNee! He was on that show on Dave last year,’ to me, after she serves him, and he sits back down, with more meaningful eyeballing at me. He glowered at me the whole time Kitty got his drinks, while I pretended to concentrate on rinsing the nozzles on the glass cordial bottles.

Yuck, I hate how he’s trying to act as if we had this deep connection, now cruelly severed.

‘Yeah I know,’ I say. ‘How do you know who he is?’

‘Idiot Soup! Ta ta ta tum tum tum, IDIOT SOUP,’ she trills the theme tune to the dire panel show on Dave, on which Robin is a regular fixture. ‘My ex loved it. Six cans, doner kebab from Chubby’s, Idiot Soup, perfect night in, he said.’

‘Not surprised he’s your ex,’ I say with a smile, and Kitty says: ‘How did you recognise him if you don’t watch it?’

‘Another regretted ex,’ I say, which I congratulate myself on being both a niftily misleading and yet entirely accurate answer.

My feeling of self-congratulation is short lived.

Robin’s table is littered with empty packets folded into foam-streaked glasses which I’m avoiding collecting, his voice is loud enough to carry in its inebriated ebullience. Robin’s always been a half pint warrior in terms of tolerance, the signs here are not good.

By my count, Robin’s had three pints now, with two sidecar shots of Spud potato vodka – damn it, The Wicker, do you have to stock interesting spirits with artistic bottles that catch your eye, and provide playful excuses for excessive imbibing? And now he’s back up for pint four. It’s obvious he’s not letting Al get a round so that he doesn’t miss a chance to harass me.

‘Six pounds forty-two pence, please.’ I set what I dearly hope will be his last drinks on the beer towel.

‘How are you able to turn your feelings off, and pull the shutters down?’ Robin says.

I ignore this and turn back to the till.

The answer of course is that there weren’t many feelings to turn off, and what I’m thinking is ‘get lost’. But this is a trap – if I say that, Robin will act even more like a wounded animal.

And it is an act, whether he thinks it is or not – he’s enjoying trying on the new role of spurned lover.

He told me, when we were together: ‘I’m not being, like, Justin Bieber, but people tend to fall for me rather than me fall for them, which is useful material, as a writer.’ I should’ve said, You sound nice, and got out at my soonest opportunity, but I thought I had things to learn from Robin. As a writer, as a maverick mind. Oh, Horspool, you dick.

I bet because I finished with Robin, it’s a novelty to him, not getting to choose the moment.

I mean, I’d always subconsciously anticipated my own dumping. I wasn’t so stupid or deluded that I hadn’t gleaned what my treatment would be, from his tales of his exes.

‘I’m no use as a man or beast to you during the Edinburgh Fest, it wouldn’t be fair on you, the comedians’ trade fair takes every drop of vigour in me I have. Let’s give each other our freedom for the time being, and see if we reconnect, further down the line.’ (Translation, he had his eye on removing the dungarees of some sassy petite American woman, lower down the bill from him at The Pleasance, and three weeks is a long time to go without when you’re paying rent on a place in the New Town. However, should he feel randy and at a loose end on return to Sheffield, it will be fine to call me. She’s cool with it, she’s really cool.)

He’s mistaken the surprise of this inconvenience for heartbreak.

‘I can’t stop looking at you, Georgina,’ Robin says, under his breath, as I give him his change. I drop character for a second in irritation and snap: ‘Yeah, can you not?’

I hadn’t noticed Lucas behind us until this moment, and I can sense him listening. I curse Robin.

‘Everything alright?’ Lucas says to me, and I say ‘Yes, fine,’ with a speed that’s almost a snap.

What makes me mad is that if Robin were a woman, this would be called bunny boiler behaviour. As a man, and an artist no less, it’s noble suffering. This is a whole dark third album, about how she done gone ruined you.

Source: www_Novel22_Net

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