know how you feel. It’s terrible when things like that happen. I feel terrible. Your girlfriend’s just dumped you and here I am wittering on about cheques.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said cheerfully, momentarily forgetting my grief. ‘It’s not like she’s just done it.’
‘So when did it happen?’
‘Three years ago.’
The whole story came out. During the appropriate breaks in my narrative, Kate made supportive ‘uh-huh’ noises which made me feel even worse. Here I was wasting the time of an interesting, velvet-voiced and quite possibly good-looking girl, telling her about my ex, when any man with any sense would’ve been trying their best to chat her up.
When I’d finished my story, roughly an hour later, without pausing she told me that I ought to be strong. She herself was recovering from a recent break-up of a relationship.
‘That’s why I was crying on your answering machine – thank you for not mentioning it, by the way – phoning the flat reminded me of living there, which reminded me of being there with my boyfriend, which reminded me of the fact that he had dumped me.’
I thought she was going to start crying, but she didn’t. Instead she took her turn in what was quickly becoming a miniature self-help group for that small but vocal strata of society known as The Dumped. Her boyfriend – whom she refused to refer to as anything but ‘my ex’ or occasionally ‘that heartless bastard’ – had dumped her three weeks earlier, totally out of the blue. They’d been together for six perfect months.
‘I lost the plot for a while,’ said Kate, ‘I really did. I used to lie in bed just staring at the ceiling. I even unplugged the phone just in case he ever tried to call me again. I didn’t eat because I knew that I’d throw up. I didn’t see anyone – not even friends – for nearly two weeks. I just stayed in watching telly and eating Hobnobs.’ She laughed. ‘Talking of which . . .’ I listened to a packet rustle and the sound of an oat-based biscuit being delicately masticated. She made a satisfied kind of cat noise and continued: ‘That’s better. And then one day I just woke up. I said to myself, I can spend the rest of my life mourning his loss or I can get on with my life. Which is what I did.’
I marvelled at her confidence. She’d managed to do the one thing I could never do – she’d moved on. But the more I thought about it the less impressed I was. There was no way she could have loved her ex the way I loved Aggi, otherwise she’d be as crippled by misery as I was. The two cases weren’t comparable.
Kate continued: ‘I’ve never understood why people insist on saying things like, “There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.” My mum actually said that to me, you know, after I was dumped by the person formerly known as “my boyfriend”. There’s me crying my heart out and all she was offering me by way of consolation was a fish metaphor! She wouldn’t have said that if that heartless bastard had died horribly in a car crash. She wouldn’t have said, never mind Kate, there are plenty of other boyfriends out there who have the advantage over your ex of not being dead.’
She had a good point.
Just as I was wondering what to say next, out of the blue she said, ‘Between grief and nothing, which would you choose?’
I recognised the quotation straight away. I knew it because me, Aggi, Simon and his then girlfriend, Gemma Walker (shelf-life three weeks, two days) had spent one Saturday afternoon, four years ago, watching Breathless , the Richard Gere version of Godard’s A Bout de Souffle as research for an essay I was writing on Hollywood adaptations of non-English speaking films. I’d chosen the title because it meant I got to watch The Magnificent Seven , too, although the downside of that was having to endure The Seven Samurai , as well, which, to put not too fine a point on it, was about as meaningful as my moderately flabby arse. In one
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said cheerfully, momentarily forgetting my grief. ‘It’s not like she’s just done it.’
‘So when did it happen?’
‘Three years ago.’
The whole story came out. During the appropriate breaks in my narrative, Kate made supportive ‘uh-huh’ noises which made me feel even worse. Here I was wasting the time of an interesting, velvet-voiced and quite possibly good-looking girl, telling her about my ex, when any man with any sense would’ve been trying their best to chat her up.
When I’d finished my story, roughly an hour later, without pausing she told me that I ought to be strong. She herself was recovering from a recent break-up of a relationship.
‘That’s why I was crying on your answering machine – thank you for not mentioning it, by the way – phoning the flat reminded me of living there, which reminded me of being there with my boyfriend, which reminded me of the fact that he had dumped me.’
I thought she was going to start crying, but she didn’t. Instead she took her turn in what was quickly becoming a miniature self-help group for that small but vocal strata of society known as The Dumped. Her boyfriend – whom she refused to refer to as anything but ‘my ex’ or occasionally ‘that heartless bastard’ – had dumped her three weeks earlier, totally out of the blue. They’d been together for six perfect months.
‘I lost the plot for a while,’ said Kate, ‘I really did. I used to lie in bed just staring at the ceiling. I even unplugged the phone just in case he ever tried to call me again. I didn’t eat because I knew that I’d throw up. I didn’t see anyone – not even friends – for nearly two weeks. I just stayed in watching telly and eating Hobnobs.’ She laughed. ‘Talking of which . . .’ I listened to a packet rustle and the sound of an oat-based biscuit being delicately masticated. She made a satisfied kind of cat noise and continued: ‘That’s better. And then one day I just woke up. I said to myself, I can spend the rest of my life mourning his loss or I can get on with my life. Which is what I did.’
I marvelled at her confidence. She’d managed to do the one thing I could never do – she’d moved on. But the more I thought about it the less impressed I was. There was no way she could have loved her ex the way I loved Aggi, otherwise she’d be as crippled by misery as I was. The two cases weren’t comparable.
Kate continued: ‘I’ve never understood why people insist on saying things like, “There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.” My mum actually said that to me, you know, after I was dumped by the person formerly known as “my boyfriend”. There’s me crying my heart out and all she was offering me by way of consolation was a fish metaphor! She wouldn’t have said that if that heartless bastard had died horribly in a car crash. She wouldn’t have said, never mind Kate, there are plenty of other boyfriends out there who have the advantage over your ex of not being dead.’
She had a good point.
Just as I was wondering what to say next, out of the blue she said, ‘Between grief and nothing, which would you choose?’
I recognised the quotation straight away. I knew it because me, Aggi, Simon and his then girlfriend, Gemma Walker (shelf-life three weeks, two days) had spent one Saturday afternoon, four years ago, watching Breathless , the Richard Gere version of Godard’s A Bout de Souffle as research for an essay I was writing on Hollywood adaptations of non-English speaking films. I’d chosen the title because it meant I got to watch The Magnificent Seven , too, although the downside of that was having to endure The Seven Samurai , as well, which, to put not too fine a point on it, was about as meaningful as my moderately flabby arse. In one
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