Page 114 of Don't You Forget About Me

‘We will be friends forever. I promise. I make friends for life,’ I say. Lucas walks past and I squeeze Kitty again.

‘How can you let her go?!’ Kitty wails to Lucas, in an excruciating moment I can nevertheless only commend her for.

‘Sadly, God gave her free will,’ Lucas says to Kitty. ‘To use as she pleases,’ he says to me.

‘Or misuse, apparently.’

This is a glib riposte, not thought through. I see a hurt look on Lucas’s face and tell myself I don’t care. I do.

39

In the end, I didn’t stay a week. That was my last shift as I knew I couldn’t bear to spend another second in Lucas’s presence. Dev was brilliant about it and after thrusting far more than he should have into my hands, he kissed my cheeks, twice, and gave me a hug that felt like it cracked my ribs.

‘Don’t be a stranger now, Georgina, d’you hear? There’ll always be a job here for you.’

I’d thanked him, gathered up the pink fluffmonster and left, not looking back, no goodbye to Lucas, who’d slammed upstairs, not to reappear. I told myself I was fine with that.

Now, sitting at home on my laptop on my first afternoon of unemployment, listlessly scrolling, I got an alert about Robin’s latest triumph. He never bothered with a personal account on Facebook, but I’d forgotten I’d ‘Liked’ Robin McNee’s fan page.

Once upon a time, you broke up with someone, and if they didn’t live in your postcode, you never saw them again. You might not have heard of them again either. I’m not a fan of this modern alternative where you can become a spectator of everything they do for the rest of their lives, simply by typing their name into the search bar on Facebook, or vice versa.

I promptly click Unlike. Then my eyes drift down to the item.

Hey everyone! See Chortle’s write up below! We’ve got a few tickets left for a special sneak preview of Robin’s new show which he’s doing at The Last Laugh tonight. Rolling out to a full tour plus Edinburgh in the new year!! SEE YOU THERE £5 on door / 7 sharp

Despite finding TV fame withIdiot Soup, Robin McNee’s long been a cherished secret of the comedy circuit. With this new self-revelatory work, Sheffield’s finest stand-up is unlikely to be secret much longer.

‘My Ex-Girlfriend’s Diary’ uses fictional excerpts of his lost, much lamented love’s journal, which he ‘finds’ when prowling in her bedroom. It’s My Dad Wrote A Porno meets Judy Blume. He recounts how his nosiness rebounds on him, as he’s privy to her lustful feelings towards her teenage boyfriend. By contrast, their time between the sheets is somewhat lacklustre.

McNee uses the diary discoveries as a jumping off point to ask – can men ever understand what women want from them, and have a hope of fulfilling it? By snooping on her fevered adolescent fantasies about another man, McNee realises his own inadequacy as a later life successor. Expect to laugh, cry and wince at the use of ‘cleft’.

I stop, palms slick with sweat. I read it. I re-read it. I read it four times more and pace the room, saying, ‘You utter BASTARD’ out loud. I tear up the stairs and check, hands clumsy as I push my clothes aside in the drawer. It’s there. It’s still there. I yank it out and riffle the pages, heart pounding. It’s all here. I hold it to my chest and sob, like a scene in a soap opera. My words, taken from me.

With shaky hands, I flick through the pages. This would be hard to read at any time, but after the showdown with Lucas, it’s excruciating. Like peeling back a bandage and plunging your fingertips into the surgical incision underneath.

… I lose track of time when we’re Doing Stuff, I mean completely, three hours had passed and all I can remember about the entire time is thinking about where his left hand was. Got home and felt like everyone could see on my face what I’d been doing all afternoon. Rubbish tea, I hate lamb stew with the fatty speckly bits. George Best has died and Dad seems sad about it. Mum said, ‘He had it coming with his behaviour’ and Dad said, ‘Mr Best, where did it all go wrong?’ and they had one of their moods with each where they’ve pissed each other off at some special level Esther and I can’t understand …

… Persuaded Mum I needed new bras and pants and so we went to Marks and Sparks and she tried to have THE TALK with me after about being safe with boys after aaaaarggh noooo. I said, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend’ which would’ve worked like a dream with Dad, probably because he doesn’t want to think about it. But Mum just raised an eyebrow and said, ‘they’re not always your boyfriend.’ I knew what was coming next, some 1950s code for ‘don’t be a slag’ and YES there it was: ‘Georgina, remember nice boys want to date nice girls.’ …

… He is the most sexy boy to ever live, I’m sure of it, even though he’s my first and I’ve only been alive for 18 years. He is the personification of sexy and I don’t think he knows how beautiful he is. He says that to me! I keep trying to imagine what actual sex will be like. How are you supposed to know what to do? You have to patch it together from films, TV, the gross magazines that Gary Tate used to bring in to school and the awful ‘How A Baby Is Made’ video we were once shown in biology GCSE, when a man and a woman were smiling at each other, went up to a bedroom and then it cut to a ballet dancer leaping around with a ribbon and the whole class started laughing …

I slam it shut again and feel a wave of shame and disgrace and fury at this invasion.

How? I remember one time, no, maybe more than that, a few times, when Robin stayed in my room after I went to work. ‘Leave by the back door and pull it shut, it’s a Yale, then you don’t need my keys.’

Left unattended in here, he went through my things. He read my diary. Did he copy out sections from my diary? I wouldn’t put it past him, and from what I can tell he’s either got perfect recall (with the amount he smokes? Unlikely) or (so much more likely) took photos of the pages. And he put them into his act.

What did Lucas say? ‘If he has anything he can use against you’? Right now, Lucas doesn’t look smart so much as clairvoyant.

It takes a very large wine and five more re-readings of the preview on Chortle to come up with what I should do.

I may have been able to bounce Robin McNee’s agent into talking to me, but I’m not so Machiavellian as to work out how to get into Robin’s dressing room.

The Last Laugh is at City Hall and I arrive at 6 p.m., an hour before curtain up. From what I knew of Robin’s habits, he will be here, swilling a beer, scrolling on his laptop, eating a tub of his lucky guacamole with extra hot Doritos (I’m not kidding, he did this. ‘Performers have rituals,’ he told me, as if he was Nikki Sixx with a bottle of Wild Turkey).

I could say I’m somebody other than I am, but then that’s not going to help me when I don’t know who that somebody who’d get access might be. ‘I’m a girl who’d like to have sex with the famed wit Robin McNee,’ might get Robin to say yes, but the venue wouldn’t wear it.

I’ll simply have to hope that once again, the unexpected nature of my appearance bears fruit.

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