Break-Up Club: A smart, funny novel about love and friendship. Lorelei Mathias
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I’ll get you another one,’ she said, as he turned back to complete his profile. ‘So what do you think about the voices thing? Could it be a goer?’
‘I think it’s somewhere between utterly far-fetched and BBC2.’
‘That’s a no then?’
*
Arriving home after a Boozenest stop-off for emergency ice cream, Holly could hear The Cure blasting from upstairs at full volume. She walked into the lounge just in time for ‘Pictures of You’ to finish and start up again.
‘Nothing in the world, I have ever wanted more, than to feel you deep in my heart!’ Bella screamed out at the room.
The lighting was scant. Creeping into the lounge, Holly could just make out Bella sat in the far corner, in her favourite little alcove. She was cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by cushions. In front of her lay newspapers and an array of broken objects.
‘If only I’d thought of the right words, then I wouldn’t be breaking my heart!… over…’ She broke into tears, mid-wail.
‘Um… how are you doing, Bella my dear?’ Holly began, thinking again what an exquisite singing voice her flatmate had.
Bella looked up. Her face was streaked with thick black lines, indicating hours of heavy-duty sobbing.
‘Yeah. Good thanks,’ she said, the smile on her face a touch maniacal. Holly sat down and took Bella’s palm in hers. It promptly became stuck. Holly slowly unpeeled Bella’s hand to discover it was covered in a filmy substance and that Bella was now picking at the layers of skin. After a brief jolt of panic, Holly realised it was just congealed glue, as Bella exploded with tears. She sobbed in Holly’s arms for a full minute, and then broke away, not before leaving a pearlescent trail of snot on Holly’s shoulder.
‘Poor B. I’m so sorry. Want to talk about what happened?’
‘Not so much.’
‘OK. Shall we talk about all this then?’ Holly asked, looking down at the Blue Peter project that was unfolding at their feet. Was it toxic, this stuff? she wondered. Should she be calling the FRANK helpline for advice on solvent abuse?
‘I’m just trying to fix stuff. I tried to make a cup of tea earlier and I accidentally smashed this mug Sam gave me. It was so upsetting, seeing it all in sad little bits; I just had to try and mend it. See – it’s much better now.’
Holly nodded. There was a huge crack down the middle, and solidified lumps of gloop lined the area where she’d wedged the handle back on. ‘Best girlfriend in the world’ now read ‘best end in the wor’.
‘Good as new.’
‘Shall I make you a cup of tea now?’ Holly asked, reaching into one of the cupboards and taking out the only non-chipped mug. She switched the kettle on.
‘Please,’ Bella said, allowing a smile to sneak out through her tears.
As was often the way, Holly looked into the mug and saw that, like most of its peers back in the cupboard, its rim had a beard of dried-on dust, giving a whole new meaning to the old adage ‘drinking from the furry cup’. She ran it under the tap as she waited for the kettle to boil, trying to suppress two thoughts, which were: 1) why am I the only one here who notices dirt, and 2) surely I am too old to live like this?
‘Anyway,’ Bella went on, ‘I realised how strangely therapeutic it felt to mend stuff, so since then I’ve been looking for other things to fix. This Superglue, it’s fucking miraculous! You must need something mending?’ she asked, her eyes brimming with possibility. She jumped up and ran towards the cupboards, coveting like a kid in a sweet shop. ‘Let me at your broken stuff!’ she said while scanning the rows of crockery.
‘Right… clearly tea is a waste of time,’ Holly said. ‘I think another trip to Boozenest…’ She grabbed her wallet from her bag and then selected Sex and the City, series five. She’d thought hard about which episode to prescribe and had settled upon ‘Plus one is the loneliest number’, which although it sounded maudlin was actually rather uplifting at the end. She looked at Bella who was puffy-eyed and catatonic. Holly opened the ice cream and stabbed at it with a big serving spoon.
‘Here, take this and apply liberally. And, when the DVD menu page loads, just click on episode two; I won’t be long. I’ll get us a bottle of Prosecco. Don’t go sniffing too much glue.’
Bella’s eyes lit up as though this had given her an idea.
‘And when I’m back if you’re ready to talk about what happened, just say and we can pause the DVD, OK?’
Bella nodded, staring at the ice cream as though she didn’t quite understand it.
‘Better make it a box of wine,’ Holly muttered as she headed out.
Arriving home armed with supplies, Holly made a pit stop in her bedroom, to hunt down her pink duvet slippers for Bella. Hands down, they were the best thing to put on your feet in a crisis. As she got back to the lounge she could hear the Sex and the City theme music playing, but it was just the same tiny segment of it, on a loop.
Bella was staring blankly at the television.
‘B, hon! You could have pressed play! You must be so sick of that same ten seconds of music?’
Bella moved her head slowly to look at Holly. Her eyes were red. ‘Hmm? I hadn’t noticed. Now you mention it, yes, it is kind of annoying. Can you booze me up please?’ she said, her eyes desperate. ‘I don’t think I should be sober in my condition.’
‘What am I thinking? Here…’ Holly pierced open the box of wine and filled a large glass, before pressing play on the remote. ‘Get this down you,’ she said as the title credits dissolved to a shot of Carrie standing in a beautiful high-ceilinged bar in Manhattan.
Bella glugged the whole glass in one go before topping herself up again. Holly curled up on the sofa, pulled a blanket over them, and prepared to let the world drift away for a wonderful twenty-three minutes.
Or as it happened in this case, three.
‘You know,’ Bella spoke up mid-scene. ‘There were times when I thought I could’ve married that fucker! I thought he was… don’t hit me for saying this but – The One!’
Holly turned to face Bella and tried to decipher whether this had been a one-off comment, or a prelude to a whole conversation. She grabbed the remote and pressed pause, just in case.
‘Oh love, I know. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘But, now he’s gone and fucked that one up hasn’t he? Or, maybe I fucked it up,’ she said, randomly picking up foam oven chips from the floor and stuffing them back into the hole in the sofa.
Holly put her arm around Bella, who began squirting glue into the gap in the sofa.
‘Belle, you can leave the sofa broken for now. You know, it’s OK if some things go unfixed.’
‘All I know is, my life’s no longer the life it was. This whole pathway I had mapped out in my head has just dismantled itself.’ she said, sobbing again. She downed another glass of red wine like it was water. You know?
‘I know. But you’ll be OK. You just need to do some recalculating of which path to take – you know, like the SatNav says?’
Holly grabbed her pink sleeping-bag slippers and slid them onto Bella’s feet. ‘There. These should help in the meantime.’
Bella was quiet for a moment. ‘Oh, my, god. What are they? They’re incredible! They’re SO comfortable! They’re like magical duvet cherubs!’ Bella laughed, her eyes lighting up for the first time that night. ‘My feet have literally never been happier!’
‘I know, right!’ Holly said, relieved something was helping at last. ‘They’re the equivalent of having a gigantic mug of tea at