New Year Fiction: I love you, Robbie

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This is an unfinished short story I started one January. I'm publishing it as a draft just to remind us at this time of year that not all New Years' Resolutions should be kept. 

Or should they?

And just for some New Year fun, tell me how you think the story should end. 

I love you, Robbie

DRAFT

by Gabrielle Jackson

London, January 2010. 

Have you ever stuck your foot under a tap and not known whether it was hot or cold? It usually happens when you’re cold and you jump into a bath and you feel a really strong sensation but you don’t know if it hurts – if it’s hot and therefore dangerous – or if it’s just an initial shock owing to the change in temperature and it’s actually good. Really good, even.

Well, that’s how I felt about Robbie. I didn’t know if I loved him or hated him. And the more I analysed it and tried to think about it, the more I didn’t know. So I decided to tell him that I loved him. I made the decision at 05.29am on 2 January. It felt momentous and important and the right thing to do. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all, but after that I went off like a baby. That’s how I knew it was definitely the right thing to do.

Later, when I found a note scribbled in pink lipliner on the back of an HSBC envelope, presumably dug out of my wastepaper basket, that read, “I love you, Robbie”, I figured it was supposed to serve as both a reminder and practice, but I didn’t need it. I’d remembered before I even found that note and I took it as just another sign I was making the right decision.

So, at a few minutes to midnight (I’d made a vow to myself I would take action that day) on 2 January, I emailed Robbie and asked if he’d like to meet up for a coffee or a drink. I suggested a place I’d been meaning to go to. He opted for the coffee (trying not to drink in January, whatever!) and agreed the time and place.

“Hey, how’s it hanging,” he said.

A little alarm went off. Who says that? But it was a little alarm, a kind of ker-ching! rather than full-on sirens, so I decided to ignore it. I had made up my mind to tell him I loved him and I couldn’t stop it even though he was still wearing his jeans too low, like he was a member of One Direction or something.

            “You’re too old to wear your jeans like that,” was my response.

            So we were off to a good start then. It didn’t make sense that I would love this person and yet it so made sense. It only made sense. Nothing else made sense except us being together.

“There are seventeen-year-old kids running around on the X Factor who dress like you. You’re thirty…”

“Thirty-two.”

“You’re thirty-two and you’re a professional and you still dress like that.”

“Is that why you wanted to meet?” he asked, in a tone of mild forebearance.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Shall we go in?”

“Good idea.”

We walked into A Little of What You Fancy and sat down. At least there was a table free. I guess nobody wants to go out at this time of year. January is not a good month for going out. It’s not a good month for reunions either, is it? It is not a good time for making decisions; there is no clarity as we all trudge through the month, eyes half open, suffering from our holiday hangovers. It’s why nobody ever keeps their New Year’s Resolutions – because they’re made at the worst possible time of year, when we’re least able to think clearly. I have always tried to make half-year resolutions myself. I don’t keep them either, but that’s more to do with my personality than my clarity of mind. This all just occurred to me as I picked up the menu.

The alarm bell finally turned into a siren. My great clarity of mind – that the water was tepid and I loved Robbie – was a trick of the season; a bad hangover decision.

“So why did you want to meet?” he asked, as I stared at the menu blankly.

“Oh, I just wanted to tell you my news. I think I’m going to get engaged.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. So am I.”

What? What had I just said? And more importantly, what had he said? I had no idea where that lie came from. How did I go from ‘I love you’ to ‘I’m engaged to somebody else’? It was January’s fault. I hate January. I ordered a large glass of red wine as I pondered how I’d get through this. I am a terrible liar. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do.

But Robbie, he was calm, the most animated, in fact, he’d been so far. No wonder he was ordering coffee; he was engaged – no need to drown out the misery of January and a new year spent alone with large quantities of wine and/or gin.THANK GOD I'd had to foresight to choose a place that sold both coffee and wine.

‘So who’s the lucky guy?’ he smiled, and it seemed genuine.

‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about it now.’

‘You don’t want to talk about your fiancé?’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ I stumbled through, ‘it’s just that I came here to catch up with you, not talk about that.’

‘You said you wanted to tell me your news.’

‘And now I’ve told you, tell me about you. I want things to be alright between us, you know?’

Ah, that was a nice touch. The wine was helping. Perhaps I could drag myself out of this for now and decide how to undo the lie later. In February, or March maybe.

‘Yeah, fair enough. I’m glad you asked me here actually. It….’

There was a pretty long silence. I think he was waiting for me to finish his sentence. I used to finish his sentences all the time, and even though he said he hated it, I knew he liked it, or at least expected it and came to rely on it. But today, I couldn’t. The pit in my stomach was too deep; it hurt too much. With every passing minute the reality of his words ‘So am I!’ sunk a little deeper into that pit. He was engaged! I wanted to tell him I loved him and he wanted to tell me he loved somebody else.

‘It depresses me,’ he had continued and I tried as hard as I could to listen to him while also trying to get the waiter’s attention. Finally a young woman came to our table.

‘May I have a bottle of that wine I was just drinking please?’

‘Shall I bring another glass then?’ she looked at Robbie, who was shaking his head.

‘Yes please,’ I said a little too loudly, and she walked off slightly confused.

‘I told you I wasn’t drinking,’ Robbie said.

‘OK, fine, don’t drink it. The glass won’t hurt you. I just didn’t want her to know I was going to drink it all on my own.’

‘Why are you drinking it all on your own?’

‘Because I feel like it, and it’s cold out and it warms me up and it tastes nice. Are they enough reasons?’

 Oh no, no, no, don’t go down that path, I said to myself. Be nice. You came here to be nice. You came here because you actually love this man and you can’t even be nice to him.

            ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You were saying something depresses you.’

            ‘You,’ he said, and he looked into my eyes with what I’d always mistaken for love. ‘It depresses me when you’re not in my life. I miss you. I want to be friends.’

I left A Little of What You Fancy some hours later and didn’t look back as Robbie watched me wander down the Kingsland Road. I could feel I had red wine stuck to my lips and my teeth were probably brown and I tried to scrub them clean with my tongue. I don’t think that’s ever a very effective solution, but part of me felt there was no point trying to look nice anyway. Robbie was getting married and it wasn’t to me. Robbie, who I had confessed my love to on the back of an envelope in pink lipliner. Maybe if I’d said it before, or more often, maybe if I’d been clearer, it would not be this way.

            I walked into the Tesco Metro that I hated and stared in the refrigerated section for something I could eat that would make me feel better. I hesitated over a packet of Scotch eggs and wondered who invented the rule that Scotch eggs may only be consumed at picnics. It seems stupid but even still, I couldn’t go through with it so I picked up a frozen lasagne instead. Then I spotted some bacon and thought I could make myself some pasta with it, and then I ran into a man and realised I was a bit drunk and probably shouldn’t rely on my cooking skills. So I kept the lasagne and bought myself another bottle of wine to go with it.

            I left Tesco and continued down Kingsland Road towards home. The moon was broken and I thought it looked how my heart felt. It was two days after a full moon. I don’t know what you call the moon when it’s not quite full but it looks like it’s broken, like a little piece has just been chipped off the side, but I looked at it and said, 'I know how you feel.'

            It had always been complicated between Robbie and me. I now had to face the fact that it was probably because I loved him and he wanted to be friends. It had always been that way, really, if I’m honest with myself. 

So...what happens next? Tell me below. 

Cows, slags, moles and illegals: is this really modern day Australia?

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Orphans, circuses and shoes excite this young reader

By Ellen Francis

I was describing one of my favourite childhood books to a friend the other day. It was about a pair of children who are orphaned and run off to find their long lost uncle Gus who is a circus performer. They find him, the boy becomes an elephant trainer, the girl becomes an acrobat, the reluctant uncle learns to love them (as does the whole circus) and they're allowed to stay. A quick Google reveals this is Circus Shoes by Noel Streatfeild and reminds me I also loved her books Ballet Shoes and White Boots, stories about sisters who become brilliant ballet dancers and ice skaters respectively. 

I also loved the Secret Garden, with its precocious child prodigy; I enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, who made a happy life from a difficult beginning; I ploughed through the adventurous Swallows and Amazons. It does appear I preferred books with strong female characters, although I hadn't realised this before. Perhaps it is also telling to look at what we didn't enjoy in comparison to our peers. I never liked any of the Enid Blyton type books: all too wholesome. And I couldn't get to grips with school-set fiction like Mallory Towers: too obviously idealized.

I'm not quite sure what all this says about me. I’d love to be brilliant at something but at 36 I've yet to discover an untapped talent (to my great chagrin). I haven't run away to join the circus but I probably am a bit of an escapist/fantastist; the positive spin would be that I am an adventurous, unconventional type. One analysis is clear to me: these favourite characters were all fiercely independent and individualistic often with fairly dysfunctional/absent families; and that I could (and still can) definitely identify with.
 

If I were a child today I'd be reading heaps about orphaned child prodigy Harry Potter, no surprises there.

Published as part of Not The Style Page's SpeedBlog series

Cross dressing and gender repudiation - the stories I loved as a kid

Speedblog, by Katherine Burgdorf.

Girls are silly, weak and annoying. Not even subconsciously this has always been my standard worldview. Or am I wrong about ‘always been’? Until about three months ago I just thought I was just born angry, but suddenly it suddenly occurred to me that all the ‘series’ books I’d loved as a kid were all dominated by girls who didn’t want to be girls or, at the very least, girls who gave two fingers up to frills and knitting. Was this the reason I’ve turned out the way I have? Is it why I get annoyed when people announce their pregnancies and engagements, or why women tottering around on too-high heel irritates me so much?

I specialised in post-war British and American fiction...from the 40s up to the 70s. The most important book series in my life was The Famous Five (first published in 1942). I read so many Enid Blyton books I have forgotten most of them but the character George (Georgina as her parents named her) in this series is the ultimate tomboy hero. I didn’t particularly care for Timmy, her dog (I thought he was badly behaved and responsible for most of the group’s life threatening situations) but George and her swimming, rowing, camping and rescue skills, was an idol. She refused to be called by her girl name, and delighted in dressing, talking and behaving like a boy to the extent people thought she was.

The other huge influence on my life was Trixie Belden, a dungaree-wearing girl detective. Trixie was smarter, braver and tougher than any of her brothers or ‘Bob-Whites of the Glen’ club friends. She was selected to be a positive influence on girly girl neighbour Honey, and even with her short sandy curls, freckles and mannish ways she attracted Jim Frayne’s devotion. She also solved all crimes committed in the greater Westchester area from antique theft to fraud and family imposters. In a strange community of prissy millionaire ladies, Trixie was a lion.

In the same vein my other heroines were go getters like Jill Crewe, who rode horses in the fictitious Chatton area, had the respect of military men like Captain Cholly-Sawcutt and set up her own pony club, Nancy Drew (more crime busting) and Ginny, who lived in wild Scotland with her mystical Arab mare Shantih...and hated her frilly sister Petra.

These were the grrrllls of my childhood. If I had to write the sequels to their lives I suspect they all moved to Manhattan and ate their twin-set wearing counterparts for second breakfast (they were all good eaters). I don’t know if they still write characters like this – I’m sure they do – and I’m not saying these women were perfect but when I think about the risk to our lives from hideous boredom, the confines of having kids and all the dreary suburban lives of others, I have no fear for these friends.

Shock confession rocks NTSP: 'Dim' bloke was my literary hero

I have a confession, and it’s not going to be pretty. In fact, good feminists and literary types might want to look away now.

Obelix, of Asterix and Obelix fame, was my childhood literary hero. Yes, you know the one: the stonemason with a taste for xenophobic violence and who, looking back, was perennially dim. His BMI was probably at the ‘morbidly obese’ end of the scale and he had a girl’s haircut. And he wore his trousers too high. And he was French.

Hmmm. I’m not sure I can actually fill the remaining 114 words of this speed blog after that clanger.

But there you have it: I’m a feminist and my childhood literary icon was a man, and not a very inspiring one at that.

I could put it down to my childhood reading list - for reasons I cannot recollect – being short on the classics. No Anne of Green Gables for me. Nor The Railway Children. Or Little Women. Of course, Pippy Longstocking (whose eponymous heroine had a similar haircut to Obelix) was very, very, very cool indeed. She was confident, independent and, best of all, irreverent. But the fact is, for some reason, she didn’t have as much impact on me as that wild boar-scarfing, Roman legionnaire-thumping Gaul. But then I was also quite keen on Pigsy from Monkey, described on Wiki as “a pig monster”, so perhaps I always set the bar low.

Wendy Saunt is a interior designer, writer and art consultant. She lives in London. You can follow her on Twitter @Wendy__Saunt

Anne and Elizabeth: My headstrong heroes

By Gabrielle Jackson

There were two adventurous young girls I was obsessed with as a young girl myself and I read about them with rapacious enthusiasm.

They were Elizabeth Allen from Enid Blyton’s The Naughtiest Girl in the School series and Anne (with a e) Shirley from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables epic. They were both headstrong but smart, troublesome but kind. I idolised and identified with them both.

Every birthday or Christmas brought the next book in the series and every time I finished one was a time of intense mourning . When Elizabeth finally graduated from the school in which she was the naughtiest, it was time for Anne to come into my life. I was older when I read about Anne and perhaps that’s why – or where – the line blurred between me reading about Anne and thinking I was Anne. Back when being called Gaye was still acceptable, I even insisted on being Gaye with an e.

I gave that up at about the time I began looking for my own Gilbert Blythe. Perhaps it’s time to re-read the Anne series and draw a line  - finally - under me as Anne since I am neither a teacher, nor married (to a doctor), but still as inspired now by her imagination and wit as I was then. 

This post was published as part of Not the Style Pages' SpeedBlog series