She isn’t listening; she never listens. Instead she goes off into the same old nonsense I’ve heard since I was a teenager. How you can’t trust any of them and I’m crazy for even trying. How, if I’m so determined to try, I shouldn’t sleep with them too soon. How you should make them have to wait for it. How they will not commit to you if you’re already giving them what they want. How you should only expect the worst anyway. I’ve never told her about what happened with Ryan, as I honestly can’t handle her thinking maybe I deserved it for being such a naive wench. Since Dad left when I was 3, I don’t think she’s even spoken to a man other than Jeremy (Jezzer) the postman. She fills the void with Bridge Club and Book Club and Church Club – swimming in pools with all the other divorced, embittered women who can never recover from the hurt of being left thirty years ago.
‘I’m sorry April,’ she says eventually, after telling me, in detail, about how you cannot trust any man: I just need to take one look at my father. ‘I know you had high hopes for this one.’
‘I did. I feel so stupid now.’
‘Don’t you feel stupid. He’s the stupid one to let you go. You’re a lovely girl. You have so much love to give.’
‘Pity nobody wants it.’
‘I want it. Megan wants it. All your friends at work want it.’
She’s always quite nice, Mum, once she’s puked up all her lemons.
‘Yeah yeah, I know I know.’ I roll my eyes. ‘I still feel stupid. You know? For thinking he could be different, he could be the one?’
‘Everyone always thinks they’re the one at the time,’ Mum says. ‘Otherwise why would we bother? You have to think they’re different in order to put yourself through it. It’s only when you’re out of it that you realise how insane you were to think that.’
Megan returns with a cup of tea. She hands me the mug and leans her face into my phone. ‘Hi Susan!’ she calls. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Oh, it’s Megan!’ Mum sounds excited. ‘Put her on.’
Even in my sadness, I’m able to smile as Megan takes the phone to give us a break from each other. ‘Hi Susan, how’s Bridge? You’re such a shark! Yes, yes, I’m doing well. Job fine. My new manager is a trash bag, but that’s what you expect in PR. Oh, we’re just going to watch TV tonight. Don’t worry. I’m taking good care of her. What’s that? Oh, yeah, we’ll probably just re-watch Dawson’s Creek as usual. If things get really wild, we’ll crack out season one of The O.C. Yes that Sandy man really is quite something, isn’t he? Those eyebrows!’ Megan laughs and I hear Mum’s laughter crackle out tinnily from my phone.
There is love, I remind myself. There is always love to be found. Not the love I really, really, want, but, for today, on this terrible today, I have all the love I need.
That’s the sort of thought Gretel would have, I realise.
That night, I lie in bed and, for the first time, I let myself really feel all the pain that men have put me through. I’ve tried so hard not to think about it for so very long but it’s all catching up with me. I can feel my heart closing as I stare up into the darkness that’s never that dark. After all this time, it’s finally giving up. I’ve determinedly clamped it open, every morning of every day since I first decided to try and love a man. Despite all the knock-backs and reasons not to and shattering disappointments, I’ve always picked it up off the floor where it’s been discarded, blown off the dust, admired the new scar, put it gently back into my ribcage, and prised it open again. I know that the opposite of love is fear. That it only works if you believe.
I don’t think I believe any more. In fact, I think I’m beyond not believing. I think I’m finally, finally, allowing myself to feel pissed off.
So I’m lying here, in my 33-year-old body that isn’t getting any younger, and I’m thinking of all the horrible things men have done to me and this wide open heart of mine.
There was Tommy, in sixth form, who told everyone I just ‘lay there like a brick’ the day after he took my virginity.