Page 13 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
‘I’d rather poke my eyes out with kirby grips.’
‘I’ll tell her we’re busy then.’ He doesn’t want to play.
Both Briony and Danny have encountered each other before, and usually we mark the occasion with nervous laughter, but today it’s hit a nerve. We stare each other out. Danny turns to walk home and expects me to follow. I pull at the dog who looks like he’d rather be anywhere other than here.
‘What did you say that was so funny?’ I ask.
‘Can’t remember.’
‘You literally spoke to her five minutes ago.’
‘She’s a daft lass, she’ll laugh at anything.’
‘Maybe it was the fact she used to shag you…’
At this point, Danny looks down at the baby, her eyes wide open, like I’m tainting her.
‘Don’t start…’
‘Don’t start what?’
If I had to list things that Danny hates about me, it’s probably my propensity to start drama when all he reckons is needed is a bracing walk and a strong cup of tea. He doesn’t like to have it out, blazing row style like I do. He doesn’t want us to talk through the finer details. He likes to quietly simmer, silence me out and then make me feel like some overreacting harpy. What I really want to announce to this cobbled street?You ordered a dildo online and then gave me a shitty excuse of a reason which makes me think you’re playing away from home! And then you went and engaged in conversation with a mumzilla who you used to shag in your teens! I want to throw dog crap at you!But I don’t. He won’t let me. He wants to make me think I’m imagining things. He wants us to walk to the station to welcome his little brother back into the fold and then wait in anticipation for tonight when we’ll sit and make nice over garlic bread and one of his mum’s crumbly birthday cakes.
He walks a little ahead of me to prove his point. But whilst I’m dramatic and perhaps at times a little too fond of shrieking to prove a point, there is a nagging feeling in my gut that something has changed the landscape. Like a fly on the windscreen that refuses to budge. Fly away, you bastard. And though this may be nothing but intuition, my journalistic need to dig prevails, just so I can be proved wrong. I reach for my phone and pretend to react to something on the screen.
‘Oh, that’s strange?’
Danny stops in the middle of the street to heed my explanations.
‘The Wezzie want me in… Something’s happened on the Crook Road Estate and they’re writing a feature and want my input. I can be back by 12p.m.’
‘They need you in now?’
‘Yes.’
He doesn’t answer, again very symptomatic of how Danny operates. He will not voice disdain but shows quiet disappointment in the style of a bearded Geography teacher.
‘Well, do what you have to. Come on, T dog. Let’s go for a shuffle.’ He takes the lead from me, our hands brush past each other and he gives me a look. I’m still not sure what it means. It’s telling me there’s a story here that I don’t know about. But it’s almost pleading with me not to look any further down the rabbit hole. He turns, starting to walk up the hill towards our house and the light refracts off his body, breaking off into tiny shards, almost like little chinks in his armour.
Three
If there was anything I left behind in London of significance, it was my career. I wish I could have engraved a tombstone for it.Here lies the career of Meg Callaghan, journalist and writer. Missed every month by the readers ofRedand the sandwich shop where she spent her monthly wage on lattes and greasy bacon butties.At the time, it wasn’t something I mourned: I was leaving the superficial world of beauty journalism behind me. I had a baby girl. I was going to be living life in the country like a Brontë character decked in Barbour and Hunter. More importantly, I had found love and I was going to follow that love. It was wildly romantic, no?
I wasn’t sure where my career had been going at that point.Redmagazine was fantastic with all the fashion and beauty freebies, the discounts on haircuts and highlights, and it’d allowed me to meet the odd celebrity. At the time, I moaned about my commuter existence and the monotony of the nine-to-five but looking back now, I’ll admit to missing the sophistication in how I dressed, the hot morning coffees I carried, the designer handbag that came as standard. When I relocated here, I did the odd freelance gig alongside the kids but then took on part-time work at the legendary local paper,The Westmorland Gazetteaka The Wezzie Gezzie. And now? Now I write about flooding, planning applications, flower shows and tourism problems. There’s not a free lip stain in sight.
I’ve had few regrets; I still get to write, investigate and balance that with family but in truth, it’s a world away from what I did before. In fact, Jan opposite me knits covers for her stationery. Seriously, staplers can get cold. Perhaps the one thing I mourned most was that marriage gave me an awesome journalist name, Meg Morton, journalist at large with all the alliteration of Lois Lane but none of the skyscraper glamour, just me sat in a quaint parochial office, held together by regular tea-breaks and surrounded by a few watercolour prints of Windermere and Alan’s A4 signs etched in Comic Sans telling us what printer isn’t working.
‘Meg, you weren’t due in today were you? How’s Molly doing?’ asks Diana.
Diana Lovell is my boss, the grand dame of South Lakeland journalism. She is a sturdy force of nature, not one to shy away from a quilted gilet, her ruddy face mapped out with thread veins. In my previous job, my editors came with Yves St Laurent Touche Éclat and high-waisted pleated metallic skirts.
‘Still croupy. And no, I had a tip on the Crook Road Estate that I thought I’d follow up on.’
‘Excellent. Steam for the croup. Let me know if you want me to shout at Gavin on the council board again.’
I like Diana’s confident earthiness; she’s been known to chain herself to bulldozers and shout at local MPs as a front for being the voice for the community and the greater good. I watch as she goes around the desks in the office and plonks jars on each one.
‘Pickled damsons everyone, handpicked. Excellent with gammon.’ Her voice commands, travelling through the office.
