The hardest and most worthwhile change I made was to replace the framed Star Wars posters in what had been our bedroom. I first saw them in Theo’s apartment – the one he lived in when we met – and after that they hung in every home we ever shared. Our mutual love for Star Wars was one of the first things we talked about, and during our honeymoon days, snuggled up in his flat, we binged the original trilogy almost every weekend.
It wasn’t the emotional attachment that made taking down the posters difficult. The fact is, I was absolutely terrified that somehow this breakup would ruin Star Wars for me; the physical act of removing those pictures from what was now my bedroom felt like a tiny defeat, and while I could accept that there were songs I’d no longer be able to listen to, places I would have to avoid for a while, and even people I would never see again, the idea that it might now be difficult for me to watch Star Wars – that I would for ever associate those films with this shitshow of a relationship – that stung.
But I did take them down and I immediately replaced them with three new posters of three powerful women; now Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor and The Bride hang side by side above my bed and I sleep a little better with them there. Incidentally, I watched all three Star Wars films last week and I still felt a childlike glee throughout.
Theo’s here today to collect the rest of his stuff – the stuff he didn’t shove in a black bag that first night or sneak out of the apartment when I wasn’t home – but he hasn’t seen the bedroom yet. I’m looking forward to that. In fact, I had to resist the urge to laugh out loud when he walked in and was met by the unmissable display of photos in the kitchen. I could see the cogs turning, his brain offering up to him the possibility that I had entirely lost it, and this, coupled with my chirpy demeanour in what I’m sure he was expecting would be an altogether more sombre scene, must be confusing him greatly. It was not my plan to confuse him, only to show him that I’m just fine without him. Any other negative feelings on his part are a bonus.
I flick the switch on the kettle while Theo grapples with the new decor. I see him spot a pair of red heels by the sofa – the pair I kicked off after a night out and chose not to put away in the hopes that he’d notice them. It’s not pretty, but it’s true; I wanted him to see them. I wanted him to wonder where I’d been. What kind of night I’d had. If I got drunk. Or flirted with anyone. Maybe brought someone back here. Had sex with that someone in our bed. I wanted those heels to remind him of the time I wore them for him with red lingerie. And now I want him to imagine me wearing them for someone else. And I want that thought to cut him.
I haven’t been with anyone else, as it happens. That night – like most nights lately – I got into bed and cried, partly from loneliness, and partly from a sense of relief at having made it through another day. Truth be told, the thought of anyone touching me right now feels deeply wrong. I did go on a date, but that was just an attempt to convince myself that I’m okay, which is ironic, because it only served to prove that I’m very much not.
The date wasn’t planned as such. Last week I was having tapas with a friend when I spotted a very attractive guy at the table behind us. I was genuinely taken aback by how good-looking this man was. I say man – I mean boy; he was a boy. At least to me he was; I’m thirty and I guessed he was about twenty-three. He was having dinner with his parents, so to avoid feeling entirely predatory, I wrote my number on a napkin and asked the waiter to give it to him when I left. It was one of those ‘fuck it’ moments you get in the throes of grief.
An hour later I got a text. I saved him in my phone as ‘The Guy From the Tapas Place’. We chatted for a few days. Then we went on a date. It was awful.
Now, I’m sure people have been on much worse dates than this one. The Guy From the Tapas Place wasn’t sleazy or obnoxious or mean. He was just vapid; a beautiful, empty vessel of a man who taught me that making conversation with someone who has no ambitions in life and no real interest in anything can be quite difficult.
We went to a cocktail bar in Shoreditch with a sort of eighties nostalgia vibe – the wallpaper looks like hundreds of little cassette tapes and the menus come in flimsy cassette-tape holders. Novelty menus become decidedly less novel when your world is falling apart though, so all of this was lost on me. Still, we ordered cocktails and chatted as best we could for a few short, endless hours.
He’s a model – of course he’s a model – but he’s ‘not actually that interested in modelling’, he was just eager to earn some extra cash because, as it turns out, working at his mate’s brewery didn’t pay very well. He was approached on the street one day and offered a modelling gig by an attractive older woman.
‘Not unlike you,’ he said.
I’ll take that.
When it felt like an appropriate amount of time had passed, I suggested we call it a night. The waiter came over with a bill for £60 and The Guy From the Tapas Place made no move to get his wallet out. I’m usually happy to split the bill – I don’t expect a man to pay the whole thing – but I definitely do expect him to not expect me to pay it just because he’s gorgeous, which is what I began to suspect was happening here. Also, the cocktails were £10 each, and he’d had four, I’d had two. So we kept talking, but now there was an elephant in the form of a bill, sitting on the table in front of us. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff.
The tension was finally broken when the waiter, half bent forward in an apologetic fashion, announced that the bar would soon be closing. At this point, my date, having definitely already seen the amount we owed, leaned over, looked at the bill and inhaled sharply through his teeth.
‘That’s a lot!’
‘Yeah,’ I said, resisting the urge to explain basic maths.
He kept looking at it in puzzlement until finally I caved. We split the bill fifty-fifty.
As we walked towards the train station, he took my hand in his. I didn’t like that. Then he put his arm around my waist and I broke, giggling uncontrollably at the ridiculously tender and overly familiar move. I assured him that everything was fine – I was just a bit tipsy, you know, from the two cocktails – but the truth is I found this all incredibly awkward, and I find awkward situations incredibly funny. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a physical reaction, like how we laugh on roller coasters. Either way, I was done.
I stopped and announced that I’d rather get a taxi. I said goodnight, told him I’d had fun, and I really felt like I was doing a good job of ending things there, but somehow he managed to mooch about until the car arrived and the next thing I knew he was in it with me. We both lived in the same direction, and he suggested I drop him off on the way. I made a big point of telling the driver there’d be two stops.
When we pulled up outside his house, The Guy From the Tapas Place leaned across the back seat for what I thought was going to be a hug. It wasn’t. As I put my arms halfheartedly around him he kissed me, but given my assumption that we were hugging, the trajectory was off and his mouth caught the corner of mine. My entire body cringed. He probably felt it. But not one to be discouraged, he looked at me and in the most dramatically Hollywood fashion said, ‘I can do better than that.’