I read the following out on Thursday at WITR, and as I was reading, I had a few qualms. Some of the subject matter might just cause offence, might make it seem as if I'm being insensitive, making light of serious medical conditions...
Tom’s Girlfriend
Tuesday, she got in from work and started on him straight
off. All because he hadn’t emptied the
bins.
‘Thomas, I’ve had enough! I mean it, if you don’t start
treating me right, I’m leaving!’
‘Yeah, whatever, Luce…’
‘And don’t call me ‘Luce’! You know what it sounds like! I…’
Tommo tuned out Lucy’s voice. She got shrill when she was
off on one, and it wasn’t like he really deserved it…
‘I mean it, Tom! When I say I want you to do something, it would
be nice if you’d actually do it…’
He should do something nice for her, get her off his back… McDonald’s, maybe? No, Nando’s . Yeah, that’d do it.
‘…talk about stuff…’
Talk about stuff?
‘…because it’s too much!’
‘Yeah, yeah. Look,
sweetheart, you’ve been working too hard… you need a rest… Sit down, I’ll get
the kettle on… And we can talk. About… stuff.’
‘You don’t even know why I’m upset, do you?’
What did she think he was, a mind reader? He put the kettle on and clinked cups to give
him time to think. Something he’d seen on TV once…
‘Could be lots of things, babe. I know I’m no good at this stuff. But if you
just give me a chance and tell me what you need…’
He pretended to listen to her while they drank their tea.
He’d rather have beer, but it was nearly lunchtime and…
‘…thought that maybe, this is my flat and I’m working shifts
and you don’t have a job and I can’t do everything for us…’
What did she want from him? He’d just made her a cup of tea,
hadn’t he? But she did seem upset. Maybe
she needed more…
And it was then he had the idea. She wanted to talk about
stuff – what if he rang the Kyle show, night in a hotel, nice break for her, go
on telly…
*
By Thursday Tommo was all sorted. He’d phoned the show and a
researcher had called back. He’d had to make up a story to get on – had to say
he thought Luce was messing around while she claimed to be working late shift –
and they said they’d want to talk to her, as well, and that might be awkward…
he’d have to dodge that one somehow… he’d think of something.
Well, Lucy didn’t finish until two today. He’d tell her when
she got in… and that left him time for a lunchtime bevvy with the lads.
She was already home when he got back… shame, he’d really
wanted to be there first to surprise her with a brew or something, show he’d
been paying attention to her… but she’d already made herself one, sitting at a
stool in the kitchenette and looking fed up.
‘Hey, Loose…y,’ he said. One thing he had been remembering
was not to call her Luce. ‘I’ve been
thinking… how d’you fancy a little trip somewhere? Nice meal, hotel for the
night?’
‘What, a holiday?’ Lucy asked. ‘How can we afford a
holiday?’
‘No, just a… a city break. In Manchester.’
‘Really? Manchester? Wow, shopping, the theatre… Tom, it
sounds great! When? And…’ Her eyes narrowed.
‘Hold on. You’ve no money, no job… What’s going on?’
‘Well, er…’ Best tell her the truth. ‘I can get us train tickets to Manchester and
a hotel and everything… but thing is, it’s… it’s that TV show. And to get us on
I had to say I thought you were cheating on me, but…’
‘You said what? When do I have time, never mind the energy,
to cheat? Although why I stick with you when…’
‘I was just trying to do something nice for you! That’s all.
So when the researcher rings up, just say you don’t trust me either, and we’ll
get on TV and stay in a nice hotel… You deserve a break and…’
‘Yes. Yes, I do deserve a holiday,’ she said, getting up and
walking into the bedroom. She came out five minutes later with her big purple
weekender bag stuffed full and her eyes sharp.
‘You know what you can do with your TV show! I’m going away! Goodbye, Thomas!’
Midnight, and Lucy hadn’t come back to the flat by the time
Tommo got in from the pub. All his mates had been asking where was Lucy, how
was she? He’s shrugged off the questions, but he was left with an uneasy,
lonely sort of feeling. What if she didn’t come back? What if she’d left him?
Next day, he waited in long past the time when she should
have come home from work. She hadn’t called or texted or anything, hadn’t even
posted on Facebook…
Except, when he looked, she’d changed her status from ‘in a
relationship’ to ‘single. What? Dumped on Facebook? Without even an ‘it’s complicated’
first?
What was he going to do, what would his mates say?
He stayed in, avoiding the pub, even though it was Friday.
There were a few texts asking where he was, but he ignored them. None of them were from Lucy. She didn’t answer when he rang or texted or
pmd… there was just that one word burning him on her profile: ‘Single’.
Saturday lunch in the pub and Dez bought him a pint. ‘How’s
Luce?’ he asked. ‘Thought you’d be out together last night?’
He didn’t want to talk about her, didn’t want to think about
it. She’d left him, and the thought of telling Dez or Billee or any of them
stuck in his throat. Dez was waiting; he’d have to tell him something, but what
would shut him up fastest?
‘She’s…’ Tommo gulped beer, playing for time. And then he
had an idea. ‘Dead. She’d dead, Dez.’
‘Oh, man! What happened?’ The sympathy in Dez’s eyes made
him feel better for a minute. ‘How?’
‘Bulimia.’
‘What? You’re kidding me? That’s an eating thing, isn’t it?
You don’t just die of that overnight…’
‘No… leukaemia, that’s the word.’
‘But you don’t just…’
‘Dez, can you drop it?’
‘But she was fine last week!’
‘Look, she’d been diagnosed and was so upset she walked out
in traffic and this great big truck knocked her over and… I don’t want to talk
about it, okay?’
‘Okay. But…’
‘And tell Billee and them, all right? Subject closed or I’ll
go up the top of the flats and make sure I join her, right?’
‘Calm down, Tommo! Sorry, man, just… sorry.’
Over the rest of the weekend Tommo repeated his story,
drinking up the sympathy and the free beers that always followed. Because
someone always asked about Lucy, and he started to enjoy the looks on their
faces as he told them. If they were friends of Dez, he’d stick to the truck
story, sometimes adding to it to see them turn green as he loaded on the
detail. He always felt better for telling someone, and it was a lot easier than
saying she liked someone else better.
Because she must have been messing round, right? That had to
be why she was so upset at the thought of the Kyle Show, she really had been
cheating and didn’t want him to find out… What was it, when she left? ‘I’m
going away,’ he’d thought she’d said, but could it have been ‘I’m going to
Wayne’s’? Wayne had been her previous bloke, lived near where she grew up,
miles away.
Monday and his mouth felt like the bottom of a fishtank. His
phone ringing grimly, and he answered before he’d really woken up.
‘Yeah?’
‘Is that Tom? Hi, it’s Becks from the Kyle Show here… we
spoke last week… I’ve been trying to ring your girlfriend but her phone’s off…’
‘She’s dead.’
He’d said it so much over the weekend that it took him a
minute to realise just what he’d done. But by then, it was too late; Becks was
gushing and fluttering and falling over herself to be nice to him.
‘Oh, my… Tom, I’m so sorry.
What a shock for you! And… and not knowing if she was cheating on you at
the time and…’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. People are asking me and I just feel like if
I have to go over it one more time I’m going to do something stupid…’
‘Tom, don’t get upset… I mean, it must be awful for you…
but… well… How would you feel about coming on the show after all? Get it all
over and done with once and for all; you’d never have to speak about her again,
then and…’
What?
‘But…’
‘Oh, not right away, of course. Give yourself a little time to grieve… you
know, I’m sure you’d feel better for getting it out there and we offer
counselling… how about I’ll ring back towards the end of the week, see how you
feel about it then?’
Wow. So it was still on, then, the chance to be on TV? A
free trip to Manchester? For the first
time since Lucy…died, Tommo began to feel almost happy.
He set off for a lunchtime drink at the pub, but decided to
have a wander round town first. If he
was going on TV, he might need a new shirt…
So he was late heading for the pub and just as he was about
to cross the busy main road to get to it, he saw a familiar figure on the other
side: Lucy.
‘Thomas, I want a word with you! Bulimia? Leukaemia?’ She
walked to the edge of the pavement, fists clenched, shouting across the road. ‘How sick are you, thinking of that? Knocked
down and decapitated by a truck?’
‘Babes…’ Tommo spread his hands wide. ‘You left me! You said
you’d gone back to Wayne!’
A bus rattled past between them, carrying away some of Lucy’s
words.
‘…said you’ve been saying…’
‘Luce?’ he took a step backwards, away from the road’s edge.
‘A truck?’ Anger mounting, she advanced on him. ‘I’m not
dead!’
A skip truck, chains rattling, hid her for a moment, then
squealed to a stop, horn blaring. Tommo swallowed, feeling sick as people piled
out of the pub and the driver of the truck staggered down from the cab. Making himself cross the now-still road on
legs of rubber, he looked at Lucy’s broken body. ‘You are now,’ he whispered.
Fortunately, my audience didn't seem to mind my references to leukaemia and bulimia; they got that it was how the character was responding. And, to my surprise, they laughed. Quite a lot. And one of the new members approached me afterwards and asked me what music I could possibly have been listening to to get that much story out of it...?
The answer? 'My Girlfriend's Dead', by The Vandals.
No comments:
Post a Comment