The Perfect Widow

And here my point about the sandpit comes in. No sooner had Mike sidled up to me at the coffee break and tried to get me laughing, than Pete, the other obvious singleton in the class, was hanging around at my elbow, asking me if I wanted another coffee from the dire machine and generally behaving like a dog guarding a bone.

I joshed along with them both, then mercifully it was back to irregular verbs, something I already felt more at ease with than most regular human interactions. I managed to slip out of the class as soon as the session was over, before either had got themselves sorted out. I needed time to think about this. Vanity aside, I was a pretty girl and thanks to Jen, I was beginning to acquire a bit of polish. Were either of these lads a particularly tempting prospect? Pete was an obvious doer-upper and, by the looks of him, would be grateful to be taken in hand, in all ways. Could I face it? Mike was in better nick – but those jokes …

At home, I realised I was being ridiculous. And much too fussy. Here was I, alone night after night in my bedsit. I was hopelessly in love with a man who, on a good day, winked at me twice and ignored me for the rest of the seven hours, fifty-nine and three-quarter minutes that we spent in the same building. As for the great swathes of time when we weren’t even partaking of the same oxygen, well, I might as well have been dead as far as he was concerned. I certainly felt that way myself.

Nope, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot going for me. Pete and Mike would be wise to run a mile, once they knew the real me. At least they both seemed to have people pushing them into social situations, whereas I was pretty much alone from the moment I left work every evening to when I rocked up again in the morning.

Over the weeks that followed, I auditioned both Mike and Pete for the role of boyfriend. Neither was perfect, by a long way, but I was used to bringing shoddy goods up to standard. After all, I’d done it with myself – and now look at me. Being fought over, in French. Admittedly, by two slightly lame canards. But still. All I needed was the raw material to work with. By the time I’d finished with them, they’d be damned near ideal.

It’s quite an art, to spot the person who wants to learn, who isn’t too attached to their own ways or too convinced they’re right. There’s a certain malleability some of us have at our core. We’re willing to change, if the prize is great enough. We’ll do what it takes.

I dropped a hint to the boys that I liked that matelot look, and the next week Pete was wearing a striped top. He asked me out to see a new French film. I admit, I’d started this whole thing to make myself look like the pick of the sandpit buckets, as far as Patrick was concerned. But, as Pete stammered to the end of his invitation, and I realised how very much he wanted me to say yes, I felt something new. It was gratitude. And actually, that little fizz of desire. There was something very flattering indeed about me, of all people, having two lads vying for my charms.

Although the men at work drooled over me, it was in a safe way that didn’t really mean a thing. These two, though, they wanted me for real. I basked in it, I really did. Finally, I’d found people who actually knew me a little bit and still saw something worthwhile. I’d never managed to have friendships, apart from Jen, and she was more of a mother to me than anything else. Back in the old days, in my childhood home, men had looked me up and down and made me feel unclean. Pete and Mike’s admiration did the reverse, and I began to feel like a bit of a siren.

I was nervous, though, about taking the plunge with either of them. Maybe they were joking? Waiting for me to register an interest, just to laugh in my face, say they’d been pulling my leg. What would they really want with someone like me? But gradually it dawned on me that they were both in earnest and, if I didn’t want to get in the way of all our prospects of learning more than the present tense in French, I had to make a choice.

Pete was the one I went for in the end. It was quite obvious, even to him, that he needed a woman’s touch. And the way his eyes lit up every time I took my precarious seat on the orange plastic chair next to his, well, it was adorable really.

The only real trouble with his rival, Mike, was the funnies. If you don’t like someone’s sense of humour, there’s not much you can do. It’s pretty fundamental, and for me it was a deal breaker. I put up with the quips for a couple more coffees before I made up my mind, and I’m afraid that gave him hope. But the fact that I sat, stony-faced, through some of what he considered to be his best lines should have given him the nudge. Anyway, he took it badly, of course.

On the face of it, my decision was absurd. Pete was a bit awkward, whereas Mike was pretty sure of himself. But that was the trouble. Mike’s veneer of confidence allowed him to plough on when it should have been clear he’d lost his audience, way back. Though he reminded me in some small ways of my beloved Patrick, always the gold standard of cockiness, this persistence ultimately only served to show me that he was incapable of learning. And that Patrick, as usual, was the real thing in a world of shabby imitations.

Pete, on the other hand, was suddenly rather presentable, when coaxed out of his nasty leather jacket. They say manners maketh man, but a reasonable selection of smart new togs can do the job pretty well. Sometimes his clothes choices had class nuances that, with my antecedents, I just didn’t understand. He loved those funny deck shoes and resisted getting rid of them. Then I finally realised they were a posh thing, as was the way he often wore a cricket jumper round his shoulders. Luckily my second-hand copy of Brideshead Revisited showed actors from the TV version on the front, wearing similar kit. So that lot stayed. After about a month, Pete looked so great that, dare I say it, I had almost forgotten Patrick.

Pete adored me, as I was fast discovering. To say this was refreshing would be a massive understatement. I’d got used to taking my mother’s assessment of my qualities as gospel, therefore it was a wonder I didn’t throw myself out with the rubbish every day.

Waking up instead with a man who thought the stars shone from my eyes was a delicious novelty. I wriggled my toes in delight when we were together, and not just because Pete had the excellent habit of bringing me a cup of tea in bed. My quest for Patrick now seemed like yet another bit of my past that I might have to move seamlessly away from. The longer my relationship with Pete went on, the more I saw that I hadn’t been ready for Patrick at all. I might never be. There was so much I didn’t know about all the couple stuff. If Patrick had taken the plunge and asked me out, I would have been a complete novice at relationships, and that would have downgraded me in his eyes.

No, if Patrick and I ever did get together (and I was now beginning to concede it was very unlikely indeed) I had to be a glittering prize. It was something I’d never been in my life before, until Pete looked at me, bless him. But it seemed that love was like that, elevating ordinary things into extraordinary ones. I enjoyed watching it all happen. Of course, I did my best to learn from it. There was, I realised, more and more I needed to finetune, in order to fit in with other people. Not least, my flat.

For me, home was downtime. I switched off, I didn’t try, I was just dormant, waiting for my next assault on the world. It didn’t matter if the place was functional, bleak even. For me, home was like the dark, empty spaces at the side of a brightly lit West End theatre set. To say the place was spartan was a little bit of an understatement. Years before it became trendy, I was more of a minimalist than John Pawson. As long as things were clean, I didn’t really see the problem. And the less stuff there was lying around, the fewer reminders there were of the chaos I’d grown up in, and the better I liked it. It was where I lay fallow, on my own. To be honest, I felt I didn’t deserve anything more. Comfort was something for the good people.

But the first time I brought Pete back, I saw the flat through a stranger’s eyes. And we both got a massive shock.

At first, I thought the poor chap was just a bit overawed that we were finally moving on to the next stage. I’d been resisting him coming home with me for a while, not quite sensing that something was off but as always guarding my privacy. For years, it was all I’d had. Now I’d finally let him in, but things weren’t going as I expected at all. He wandered around, while I made the coffee we’d allegedly come back for so we could leave it untouched and get down to basics, but it didn’t take him long to inspect the place. Well, the flat was microscopic. And, as I was beginning to realise from his expression, there was something drastically wrong with it. But what? I was at a loss. It was squeaky clean. It had everything I needed. Bed, toaster, kettle, microwave, my books. Once, it had also had my collection of jewellery and fripperies, but thanks to Jen the few of these that remained fitted inside a paper bag in the bathroom.

‘Just moved in?’ That was the question that should have alerted me.

‘Been here, oh, about three years now.’ I smiled bewitchingly over the jar of instant. His eyes dropped down to the granules – the fancy kind, mind you, I’d been treating myself – and did another curious double take. Clue number two.

‘I expect you’re too busy to get settled?’ he said, offering me a way out. But out of what? I didn’t get it. The flat was pristine, orderly. I hated mess, I’d put all that behind me and I proved it every time I undid a fresh bottle of bleach. What was his problem? Because there clearly was one.

I brought the coffees over to the bench. I only sat on it to eat, so the hardness didn’t bother me. I read my books in bed. He sat on the edge, put his cup somewhat nervously on the floor. I didn’t think to offer biscuits. Well, I didn’t have any. Extra carbohydrates were definitely not on my agenda, and the list of visitors I’d had back to my flat was short. Him. I had no graceful preparations ready, even though I’d decided tonight was going to be his night. Well, that’s not quite true. I’d painted my toenails, shaved my legs. But the flat? Fine as it was, I’d thought. But I’d been wrong.

‘No cushions. I like it. Uncluttered,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably. I made a mental note. Buy cushions. ‘Where do you hide the telly? Radio? Hi-fi? Speakers?’

I shook my head briefly. I’d decided against these distractions long ago. Although those Disney princesses had danced their way through my childhood, lulling me and blotting out so much, once I had the choice I opted for my books. I didn’t want the drone of the telly a moment longer. There was too much to get on with to waste my time on inessentials. Sometimes it meant I had to bluff my way, when some series or other was all the rage, and it was the only topic the girls at work could talk about. Not that I hung around with them much, but there were times in the canteen or as they passed my desk. There was enough in the newspapers to tell me pretty much everything I’d ever need to know about trashy TV.

I learned to make the right sort of comments, keep the conversation going, though it wasn’t really safe to offer a major opinion. The one time I had, something had been awry. I couldn’t work out what – well, I’d never seen the show. Tumbleweed for a moment, a week of strange looks, then we were back to normal. But I never risked it again.

As for music, well, I’d never got it. When you’ve been brought up with paper-thin walls, when the dubious heavy metal choices of the man living three floors down became the beat that your glass of orange squash danced to, not having sounds in your life was a blessed relief. I wallowed in the velvety luxury of silence. Same thing went for cooking. The idea of anything that lingered – fish, curry – revolted me. I’d hated the stenches of the stairwells. Even when it wasn’t effluent, other people’s cooking smelt nearly as bad to me. I loved my microwave. You only needed to use a plastic fork – prick the film, then shovel the food in. Throw the lot away afterwards, all done. How great was that?

Anything that impinged on me from outside, I hated. No mess, no fuss. Plenty of space around me, all the exits clear. After growing up in the Tower of Babel, I hardly ever raised my voice. Patrick, later, accused me of faking my tone, like Margaret Thatcher, but that was always real.

Pete, still looking around my flat like a drowning man casting about for something to latch on to, piped up at last.

‘Well, I can see what you do like. Books.’ He sounded overawed, and now I looked around in my turn. I thought of my library as a kind of comfort blanket. But maybe it was daunting, if you weren’t a reader. I’d had the sense to kick the self-help section under my bed that morning, when I’d decided it was Pete’s lucky day, but otherwise the full might of all the knowledge I wanted or needed was staring down at us from serried ranks of Billy bookshelves that I’d picked up from Ikea, braving the maze of families and cheap meatballs, and assembled myself – not without peril to my manicure.

‘Books do furnish a room,’ I said gently, knowing that, despite an education I’d begun to suspect was quite expensive, the reference would probably fly several miles over his head.

At that point, my cat, Mephisto, strolled in and saved the day. Black and fluffy, from a distance Mephs looked the business and could pass for a Persian cross. Close up, you noticed his battered ear, the gash over his eye which had left the trace of a scar, even the fact that his fur was more of a dark rusty brown than true black. Like his mistress, he wasn’t quite what he seemed. But unlike me he had bags of swagger. Pete dropped to his knees and started cooing, while both Mephs and I looked on in surprise.

‘I didn’t take you for a cat person?’ Pete said, looking up from where he was now giving Mephisto a full belly-rub. The cat had not hung about long before capitulating. He was now emitting the special low humming sound I’d thought he saved just for me.

‘Mmm,’ I said, non-committal. It wasn’t the moment to disabuse him. I just hadn’t been able to leave the cat with my mother when push came to shove. One of her hook-ups had given it to her – as a joke, I was pretty sure. She wasn’t fit to look after a child, we all knew that much. Why burden her with an animal as well?

Anyway, despite my better judgement, Mephs and I had been together ever since my final flit from her place. There’d been no time to be organised. I’d just grabbed what I could and I’d run. At the last minute, Mephs had miaowed. I’d looked under the sofa, wasting precious seconds, and seen the green glass of his eyes. I couldn’t leave him. I’d grabbed him and shoved him unceremoniously into my backpack, and that was that, we were together.

Unlike his namesake, this Mephistopheles had never promised me the world, just a load of hairballs and the occasional scratch to keep me in line. He’d definitely fulfilled his side of the bargain. He’d been the king of our old estate, but I’d forced him to become an indoor cat with a litter box and a view out of our new tenth floor window on the other side of town, take it or leave it. Well, I could hardly cut a cat flap in our front door. I was pretty sure it was against all the council regulations to have a pet, though I didn’t look too closely. That would have interfered with my pleas of ignorance if we got caught.

Lugging cat food home with my frozen lasagnes was a chore. But I loved the old dear, and I’d thought he was equally discerning. I now saw, as he writhed and purred for Pete, that he was a shameless old tart who’d go with anyone. Wonder who he got that from? I thought sourly.

But Mephisto’s appearance had saved the day. Pete relaxed completely. Keeping an animal had, oddly enough, proved I was human.

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