Chapter 4  

In which Lizzie tries to fathom her feelings but leaves off to attend the Hair Academy and spend for betrayed women everywhere... 

The Other Woman Thing

The following morning - Cut’s like a knife, doesn’t it? The idea that the man you love, the human being you are most intimate with, this individual you’ve allowed inside your body in a spirit of mutual adoration and unparalleled closeness can actually turn to someone else, find her exciting enough to get an erection, attractive enough to completely betray your trust, addictive enough to keep coming back for more, lying and cheating all the way down the line. No wonder I now see only negatives – bags under the eyes (haven’t slept for days), frizzy hair, saggy skin, aging curves, rough knees, pallor and shadows. Sodding Kevin Gates (soon-to-be-ex-love-of-my-life) has boosted his own ego by sucking every last breath of life out of mine.

     Standing here in front of the full length mirror in a shaft of merciless winter sunlight I am quite prepared to believe that a teenage mutant ninja turtle has more allure than I do.  Turning this way and that, no, I decide, I can’t find anything even remotely attractive. Can’t actually see anything unpleasant either but I guess I have to be repulsively misshapen – why else would it happen?  Not that society doesn’t offer plenty of encouragement to guys with low boredom thresholds, a problem with their egos and an inclination to indulge themselves. Every newspaper and magazine, every film and TV show, every catalogue, billboard, music video and advertisement these days seems to be packed with images of female availability.

Commodity Sex-Partner remains twenty-two years old her whole life. She sports a permanent light tan and quite ‘naturally’ never goes grey. She has reasonably sized breasts, ones that can look full and sexy in a push-up bra but not large enough ever to sag even the teeniest bit, and her buttocks are round as a peach, though there’s not an inch of spare on her hips. She also smiles a lot (when she isn’t being sultry) and suggests in her photos that she readily makes herself available for piece-of-meat sex any day of the week – one leg thrown over the arm of her chair, one breast about to slip out of her blouse, navel exposed and a neckful of beads hanging way down towards her pubic area, forcing every viewing eye to contemplate the open-all-hours v of her crotch.

Could the young, the easily influenced and bored middle-aged guys have their judgements shaped by the arousing dominance of these images? What if they have an insidious effect on all of us, whether or not we feel particularly vulnerable? What if they make some men feel life, and specifically their own sex life, is short-changing them? That they’re missing out? And what if we women are subliminally intimidated into thinking ourselves very much a consolation prize for our men, whom we suspect would far rather have the lip-glossy eighteen-year-old wearing a La Senza thong and the kind of accommodating smile that tempts a guy to believe real women actually enjoy their role as sex objects? Deceptively drenched in glamour as it is in the movies, on the billboards, in the magazines and on TV, are we as a society being manipulated into resigned acceptance of destructively mindless acts of infidelity?

     But surely it’s unfair to suggest that men are that easy to lead astray? And the idea of them all possessing a superficial streak, well, that’s just an excuse trotted out by the self-indulgent ones, isn’t it? Bloody hell though, what if it isn’t? Would that mean ‘love’ didn’t exist at all anymore? Except for that warm, fuzzy, family-feeling kind of love that means after a while they start to think of you as their mother? Whatever happened to soul-mating? To sexual excitement belonging in the mental sphere? To playing so hard to get he only gets it once a month and for that he’s grateful? To staying sexually active well into your eighties because you can get a hard on about who your partner is and not what they look like?

         I yank on my uniform tight jeans and a tatty long-sleeved t-shirt. Much to my amazement my figure looks ok but then, hang on, what’s this? Lean forward for a closer look, stroking my upper lip with an index finger. Bloody hell! Eldest and I appear to be getting our first moustasche together – I will have to ask him for advice on how to deal with it.

    So how does she feel? The sad, skinny female out there who could fancy my Kev? Am I The Other Woman to her? Is she alone in her bedroom / adultery nest at this very moment, staring at herself critically in the mirror, wondering why she only amounts to a plaything for a grumpy woodsman who’s real ties lie elsewhere? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe her flabby ego too has been tremendously enlarged by these circumstances. Maybe that’s what she’s really in it for? Look at it this way: she’s attracted a man who has binding ties – that means she has to be very powerful, irresistibly powerful. He’s putting his whole life to date on the line for her. He may lose the business he’s worked to build up. His assets will be sliced asunder. His child may grow up without any useful contact with its father. He must really be out of his mind with desire! Maybe, for some people, that’s a bigger buzz than bungee-jumping? Some people look outward, buy boats and sail away to far flung places. Others dump their jobs to do something more altruistic. Others still sod off to trek Patagonia or conquer the Himalayas on a Llama. But maybe there are some other, smaller people who reach that middle-years water-shed and, on looking inwards at their own unsatisfied needs, are so appalled at who they are that they reach out blindly, grasping at the lives of others like love-leeches.

     Now Lizzie, steady on there – this is a very difficult time but don’t go over the top, and don’t be cruel. You know she could be feeling really bad, trapped in a situation she never foresaw, a victim of her own forty-something vulnerability, guilt washing over her like a Tsunami along with fear, regret, insecurity. She could be standing the other side of this mirror, tears staining her face, shoulders sagging, cheeks gaunt, nervous-rash of white-headed spots erupting across her forehead.

Back Downstairs Searching the Understair Cupboard for that Jacket I Bought Three Years Ago and Always Felt Was Too Good to Wear Routinely -There are a limited number of ways to make oneself feel better in situations such as this. Deliberate decapitation of another human being, albeit with his own top-handled chainsaw, is against the law and anyway, such a gruesome act could lead to mental illness, early menopause or even the sort of nightmares that leave you with eye-bags. But, when one’s partner has been an unfaithful shit, the temptation does loom large to take control of the joint finances and spend everything in an entirely justifiable attempt to lift one’s spirits. Who’s to say this, comparatively minor and certainly bloodless temptation, should be resisted? Giving in to a healing urge towards self-indulgent expenditure is a better idea than downing a bottle of sleeping tablets, isn’t it? And if you’re going to have to leave the relationship behind, why not make sure you have some nice things to take with you?

     I’ve always liked having my hair done. He was never keen on my paying for services such as that. Now my mind runs on like a frisky colt loosed onto the Prairie. Oh, and boots! I’ve always liked boots. And glittery eye-shadow. Expensive moisturizer. Red underwear, lacy. Most things in silk. Large pendants made from semi-precious stones. Black patterned tights. Rock music (never have enough CD’s). Jackets. Velvet. Books with decorative covers to take notes in. Bath Bombs. Fake fur. Big belts. Flowers. Tools (for doing one’s hair). Scented candles. Crabtree and Evelyn body lotion. Frothy cappuccino and strawberry tarts. A different perfume for every mood (likewise jackets). Crystal wine glasses with long stems. Wine. Sexy sunglasses. Fake pearls. Hell no – real ones.

     Things are so fragile for us that it occurs to me it might be an even better idea to forget the ‘joint finances’ idea and copy down the number and expiry date of his personal Visa in order to do some on-line shopping. If we split inside the next thirty days, the bill will come his way as, well, a parting gesture. One beyond the inevitable two-fingered salute, that is.

    No, too boring. Sat with only a computer screen for company, I don’t think so. Town’s the place for me. There are people there and I like people. Someone behind a till might be nice to me and right now I’d like that too. In fact, I might just have to ask the friendly lady with the plump face and dimpled arms from the Building Society to come out from behind her security glass so I can have a hug.

     The knee-jerk run round Tesco after the bomb had dropped was just a warm up. Like a well-trained marine preparing to enter the field, I sombrely strap on a bum-bag full of plastic and jump into the Audi.

 

11.20 am -  Reclining in a shampoo-scented mist at the Hair Academy - Find myself telling Debbie the trainee stylist the whole story as she massages organic conditioner into my scalp. Debbie, with her blonde ponytail and spare tyre of young flesh protruding over hipster jeans, does incredulous very well. So do Tanya, Sarah-Jane and Lynsey. Of course, I haven’t been able to say anything about anything locally. There’s no better way to finish a relationship off completely than to tell all your friends and neighbours you’re having difficulties. Especially not where we are. Chances are, most of them know already and what they don’t know they will have made up. Some will have everything completely wrong, one or two will know better than to guess and gossip but a certain number will have been looking forward to something of this nature occurring in their immediate vicinity to brighten up their otherwise exceedingly dull rural lives. But Town is different. Town is twenty miles away and Debbie, Tanya, Sarah-Jane and Lynsey inhabit a very different, multi-tonal, copper-streaked, image-transformational universe.

Deep down, beneath the veneer of red-faced shock and breathless alarm, they are enjoying my sordid revelations for the opportunity it affords them to offer outraged feminine solidarity. I get their undivided attention for a good twenty minutes.

     Some time later, while I bask under the Climazone waiting for the red semi to take, Debbie brings an armful of magazines neatly folded open to the girl-power articles. “Is He Holding You Back?” “My Cheating Boyfriend’s Still On Crutches Six Months On” “Talk Yourself Out Of loving Him” “Is He Cheating? How To Tell And What To Do…”

     The resident pain in the region of my stressed ventricles is considerably eased by the time Daniel steps up to run long, artistic fingers through my burgundy hair. I haven’t said a word to Daniel but I have been watching him (who wouldn’t?) as he attended his enchanted female clients, one ear tuned to radio one, the other tuned to the gossip. My gossip. He begins his massage and the tension in my neck muscles retreats like rain evaporating in warm sunshine.

     Daniel is the silent type. He likes to wield his scissors with serious-faced concentration, lifting and arranging as he cuts, stepping back periodically to assess progress, judging length with his fingertips, studying style development in the mirror with an artistic frown. Daniel doesn’t like to be distracted with idle conversation and I wholeheartedly approve of this. Especially today. A quiet man with toned biceps, talented hands and no pretensions. I know he’s not gay, there’s something about him – maybe it’s the way he smells? And then there’s that tan, not OTT, just healthy, as though he was born that way. With a tingling sense of having been, perhaps, let off the leash, I can’t help thinking about his skin and wondering how it would feel against mine…

     “Don’t believe in marriage,” Daniel says out of the blue, just as, in my imagination, I’m stroking my way below the level of his lightly bronzed waistline. Then he adds hastily – “not that partnership for life’s a bad thing, I believe in that… it’s just marriage, you know? What does it mean?” I nod, but only slightly, so as not to jeopardise his efforts to re-instate my layers. “And kids, kids aren’t for me. Love everybody else’s, but you have to know what’s right for you, don’t you? Prefer the Town to the country (not that I’ve ever lived in the country) but I like a bit going on…”

     I smile guiltily at him in the mirror while he stretches his fingers through my hair and pulls gently to assess comparative length. My turn to be the silent type, just lying back and enjoying his fingers. Sometimes he accidentally strokes my cheek, sometimes the back of my neck, making even the smallest hairs stand right on end. It’s possible I could be mistaken, but it sounded like he was about to, well, present his resume. This is intriguing. Perhaps now would be a good moment to ask him whether he’d consider sex with me in my kitchen? Perhaps, really and truly, to someone as useful as this with his hands, it wouldn’t be all that different from delivering a good cut?

     When I open my eyes he’s staring at me in the mirror, staring at my embarrassingly broad grin. I wipe it, and cough. The truth is, I could no more ask my hairdresser to have sex with me up against my fridge-freezer than I could walk naked into a PTA meeting. In lieu of both activities, I will shop till I’m utterly exhausted all afternoon then treat myself to a vibrator off the internet courtesy of Kev’s Visa.

Oh, and I will probably never go back to the Hair Academy.