2000 - Thirtynothing Read online

  But then she’d turned thirty and had begun to evaluate her situation, and all of a sudden the life of a serial monogamist didn’t seem like so much fun and there wasn’t the time to waste any more. Her youth was running out, her choices were diminishing, and it had hit Nadine then, the real reason why she went out with so many losers: she only went out with men who didn’t threaten her friendship with Dig. The moment a boyfriend started to make claims on her time or her emotions, it was over. The moment a boyfriend began to show any signs of resentment about the amount of time she spent with Dig, it was over. There existed between Dig and Nadine this sort of unwritten law that said that they weren’t allowed to spend quality time with anyone but each other. Weekdays were for boyfriends and girlfriends; weekends were for Dig and Nadine.

  Dig was Nadine’s best friend, her favourite person in the entire world, and as long as they were friends she didn’t actually need to be in love with anyone else. It would just complicate everything if either of them ever fell in love with another person.

  The only problem was that they just didn’t fancy each other; each one epitomized the antithesis of the other’s ‘type’. Dig liked tiny, girl-child-type women (which Nadine most certainly wasn’t) who made him feel manly, and Nadine liked enormous hairy men (which Dig most certainly wasn’t) who made her feel delicate. If they’d fancied each other, they would have been married by now. Probably.

  Nadine looked at Maxwell, staring warmly but blankly at her, and she suddenly realized that he was going to be the last Wrong Boyfriend. Definitely. Without a doubt. No more Wrong Boyfriends. Only Right Boyfriends from here on in. She would have one last crack at trying to find a suitable man, and if that failed, she’d marry Dig, skinny legs and all.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Maxwell,’ she said, sitting down beside him on the bed and gently removing the mug of tea from between his enormous fingers. ‘I think we should talk.’

  Well, thought Nadine, as she closed the front door quietly behind Maxwell’s slightly stooped figure, at least he didn’t cry. That was the worst thing, the most horrible thing imaginable, to see a grown man cry, especially a man as big as Maxwell. He’d taken it quite well really, almost as if he’d never before considered the concept of being dumped and was going to go home and give it some thought, as if she’d given him some unfathomable lateral-thinking test to consider. Poor Maxwell, she thought. But he’d be fine. He’d be just fine—he was good-looking and funny and caring and generous—he’d find someone else in days. A nice Essex girl who would look up to him and respect him and love every inch of his hairy, chunky body, a kind girl who would appreciate him and make him happy, happier than Nadine had ever made him.

  He’d be just fine. Unlike her.

  Nadine glanced around her now empty flat, at the dents in her gaudy Bollywood duvet cover left by two bodies, and the hated pair of mugs still sitting accusingly on the bedside table. She absorbed the change in the atmosphere, the stillness of the air, the sudden silence from outside her bedroom window—and then she remembered how she’d felt twenty minutes ago, the thought of the day ahead which had pleased her so greatly and the pure moment of unblemished happiness she’d experienced and embraced.

  It occurred to Nadine that maybe those moments weren’t meant to be fleeting, that maybe they were like seeds, and you were supposed to plant them and water them, and that if you tended them well, eventually you would grow a Tree of Happiness.

  And if that was the case, she wondered, how come every time she was lucky enough to find a Happiness Seed she mashed it up, spat on it, stamped on it and then threw it out of the window? Why did she have to spoil absolutely everything?

  Nadine felt her stomach begin to rumble with fake, post-late-night-curry hunger. She contemplated rustling up a quick bacon sarnie but then decided she had to get out of the flat, go for a walk, see someone, talk to someone.

  She picked up the phone and called Dig.

  THREE

  So,’ said Dig, regarding Nadine disbelievingly over a large plate of greasy meat and chips, ‘let me get this straight. You dumped Maxwell because he chose the wrong mugs?’

  ‘Well, yes. Among other things. I mean—we both know he wasn’t right for me, don’t we?’

  ‘I really liked him…well, compared to some of the other men you’ve been out with this decade.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. So did I. Who wouldn’t? But he was so annoying, you know? The way he dressed, and the way he was always going on about his mum, and Celine Dion, and the fact that he was allergic to garlic of all things—I mean, how can you go through life being allergic to garlic?—and he was so pathetic, sometimes, so…so…so…’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Very nice. But just so…’

  ‘Kind, pleasant, generous?’

  ‘Yes. But, so…so…’

  ‘In love with you?’

  ‘Look’—Nadine pointed a speared chip at Dig—‘he held his knife and fork like he was going to knit a sweater with them, OK? That’s just one of those things I, personally, can’t live with.’

  ‘Oh my God, Deen! You complete fucking snob!’

  ‘Well, it’s the truth. I can’t help the way I am, can I? It just used to make my blood boil. And he couldn’t spell either, and there is nothing worse than a man who can’t spell—it takes all the romance out of cards and love letters and things.’

  ‘You are unreal, Nadine Kite,’ said Dig, slowly shaking his head from side to side in wonderment, ‘you really are. What planet are you from?’

  Nadine looked at him sniffily, sensing that her defence was shaky, to say the least. ‘OK,’ she conceded, ‘I admit it. I am a snob, and I am a fussy cow and I do demand a lot of men but, the bottom line is this: Maxwell wasn’t right for me and I didn’t want to go out with him any more and I’ve found a whole load of excuses not to love him back. But, I know, I know that when I meet someone who is right for me, then I won’t care whether or not they can spell, or how they hold their cutlery.’

  Dig snorted sceptically.

  ‘Yeah, right. Take the piss. But I know it. OK?’

  Dig cut a swathe through the juices on his plate with a chunk of toast and smiled wryly at Nadine. ‘Deen,’ he said, popping the toast into his mouth, ‘you know I love you dearly, you know you’re my best girl and I would do anything for you. But you are a nightmare. You are a complete and utter nightmare…If you were a bloke, you would be a bastard.’

  Nadine dropped her jaw in mock indignation.

  ‘…And one day you are going to get your comeuppance. You are going to meet this so-called “perfect guy” and you are going to put up with his appalling table manners and his shocking shirts and he is going to turn around and shit all over you. He is going to turn around to you one day and say, “Nadine, you’re a great girl, but I just can’t stand those purple trousers you wore last Thursday and the way your ears wiggle when you laugh and, quite frankly, your ginger pubes make me want to puke. So, no hard feelings, eh?” And Deen—and I say this with all the affection and love in the world—I for one cannot wait for that day to come.’

  Nadine took a sharp intake of breath and clutched at her neck. ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Since you were twenty-two years old, since the day you left university and realized that you were never going to see Phil again, you have been out with every bloke who was stupid enough to ask you. As if three years with that weirdo wasn’t enough. You have never once stopped and asked yourself if you actually wanted to go out with them, whether they were suitable, whether you fancied them, or if it stood a chance in hell of working out. You just use men to flatter your ego. You spend a couple of weeks doing everything within your power to ensure that they fall in love with you, and then the minute they do, you spend another two months building up a big enough list of faults and grievances to justify dumping the poor bastard.’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘Yes, you do. Every bloke who asks. Doesn’t matter if they’re thin, fat, young, old, rich, poor or ugl
y. All they have to do is ask. Is it any wonder that it always ends in disaster? Is it any wonder that you spend half your life dumping them? Is it any wonder that you haven’t met the right guy yet?’

  ‘I do not go out with every guy who asks me.’

  ‘OK then. Name me one guy you’ve turned down—one guy.’

  Nadine thought for a moment and then smiled wickedly. ‘Well. Let me think. Oh yes, that’s right. There was one bloke—you!’ She smiled smugly. ‘Got you! I turned you down.’

  Dig shook his head. ‘No no no. That doesn’t count. We were kids then. I’m talking about after university, after the thing with Phil.’

  Nadine went silent for a while as she flicked rapidly through her memory files, her face wrinkled in concentration. ‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘it’s not as if I get asked out every day or anything. You have to take these opportunities when they’re offered.’

  ‘Oh, come on! You haven’t been single for more than a week in the last ten years and you haven’t been out with anyone for longer than a few months. Work it out for yourself.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ leered Nadine, triumphantly, ‘oh yes, of course! I forgot I was talking to the world’s leading relationship expert. I forgot you were the man who had his heart broken when he was eighteen and hasn’t let one single woman near it since. I forgot I was talking to the man who hasn’t known the surname of the last six girls he’s slept with, who thinks commitment is staying the night, who thinks a date is a chewy version of a prune and who woke up in bed this morning with a seventeen-year-old girl!’

  An old man who had been working his way slowly and disagreeably through a plate of overcooked roast beef and congealed gravy since they arrived threw Dig a look of profound admiration, and a young couple in the corner looked up from their newspapers with raised eyebrows, turning subtly for a glimpse of this apparent paedophile. Dig blushed.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he whispered, ‘but at least I don’t lead them on, at least they know what they’re getting into. I never give them any false hope. And besides, girls that young, they don’t actually want anything serious, anyway. Not like you lot.’

  ‘You lot, who lot?’

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing at her, ‘you thirty-something women.’

  Nadine raised her eyebrows ceilingwards. ‘Oh,’ she growled, ‘don’t start all that business again. I’m far too hungover for that argument. And anyway, I’m not thirty-something, I’m thirty-nothing.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Well, thirty is more like a full stop on your twenties, really. I don’t think you’re actually in your thirties until you’re thirty-one. Anyway, all I’m saying is, you’re in no position to preach to me about how I should be conducting my love life. You’re the nicest bloke I know and one day you’re going to make somebody a wonderful husband. But right now you should carry a health warning.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ sighed Dig, smiling, ‘so we’re both as bad as each other. You dump perfectly decent men because they choose the wrong mugs, and I’m the Jerry Lee Lewis of Kentish Town…Let’s face it—we’re both crap.’

  ‘Oh God, Dig. Look at us. We’re both thirty now—we’re too old to be crap, we’re not supposed to be crap any more. We’re supposed to be getting it together. My mum had two kids by the time she was my age and, as far as I can tell, I still am a kid. Where’s my biological clock, Dig? Where is it? Why haven’t I got one? Maybe if I had one then I’d be a bit more selective about who I went out with because I’d be subconsciously looking for a good gene pool, you know, a hunter⁄gatherer type, a sperm donor rather than a temporary ego boost.’

  ‘And I’d be looking for a good, heavy-hipped, child-bearing woman instead of chasing after ectomorphic breastless androgynes with body piercings.’

  ‘What have we been doing for the last ten years, Dig? I mean, I’m under no illusions about everlasting love, but we haven’t even come close. We haven’t had one long-term relationship between the two of us. Other people spend their twenties learning lessons about love and relationships, and you and I have just been going round and round in circles, learning nothing. We’re pathetic. Maybe that’s what we should be doing, Dig. Maybe we should at least pretend that we’re looking for a partner to have children with, even if we’re not—that way we might choose a little more wisely.’

  ‘But I don’t like heavy-hipped women.’

  ‘Oh, Dig. Don’t be ridiculous. Women don’t have to have heavy hips to bear children. Look at Pamela Anderson—she’s had two and she doesn’t look like she could give birth to a clothes-peg. No, it’s more a frame of mind, an attitude. I think we should give it a bash, you know. I mean, look around this place. Look at her.’ She pointed towards a pretty girl in her late twenties sitting alone with a bacon sandwich. ‘She’s nice-looking, she’s got lovely hair, she’s slim and she’s most probably single. I bet if you asked her out, she’d say yes.’

  ‘Yeah, but why? Why is she single? If she’s so great then why isn’t she sharing her bacon sandwich with someone?’

  ‘God, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just split up with someone, maybe she’s just dumped her boyfriend because he put too much sugar in his tea. Maybe she’s as bad as us.’

  Another girl walked into the café then, and the bacon-sandwich girl’s face lit up. The two women greeted each other warmly with a kiss on the lips, and Nadine saw their feet entwine underneath the table.

  ‘…Or maybe she’s a lesbian. But that’s not the point. The point is, we’re thirty years old, we’re healthy, we’ve got flats, cars, jobs and security, we’re both unbelievably nice people and we’re going to wake up one morning and find ourselves all alone. All our friends will have big messy houses full of teenagers and grandchildren and noise and activity, they’ll be arranging weddings and going to graduation ceremonies and discussing their children’s achievements and sending them off to see the world, and we’ll be alone, you in your anally tidy flat, me with fifty years’ worth of glossy magazines arranged in piles, with nothing but memories of how it was to be young. That’s not right. I don’t want that. And the only way we’re going to be able to avoid that is by doing something about it now.’

  Dig had been nodding throughout this and now stuck one hand out towards Nadine. ‘I agree,’ he said, ‘and I think we should make a pact here and now. I’ll start looking for a more mature woman and you start looking for a bloke who measures up to your standards.’

  ‘And the first person to start seeing a decent man or woman gets…gets…’ Nadine quickly calculated the chances of Dig recognizing a ‘real’ woman if she slapped him around the chops with her handbag, smiled and stuck out her hand, ‘a hundred quid.’

  Dig’s eyebrow shot up into his hairline but he grabbed Nadine’s hand and shook it hard. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘OK. A hundred quid for the first person to start dating a decent person.’

  ‘So that means a woman over the age of twenty-six, for you and a man who I actually like, for me. OK?’

  ‘OK!’

  They shook hands hard and smiled at each other across the table, each one as certain as the other that this was one bet that would never be called in.

  Starfish and Kites

  Dig thought Nadine was a bit of a drip when he was allocated the seat next to hers on his first day at the Holy Trinity Convent School for Boys and Girls in Kentish Town.

  She had unruly red hair and squidgy white hands with dimples where she should have had knuckles. She was very small and very round, and her grey school skirt stood out starchily from her legs in an angular ‘A’ shape, ending somewhere near her ankles, which were densely clad in thick-ribbed tights.

  Nadine thought Dig was a bit of a nerd when he awkwardly approached the desk next to hers. He was very skinny and very pale, with an overdeveloped head of thick black hair that looked, to her, like a bad wig. His uniform wasn’t crisp and brand-new like hers, it looked sad and threadbare and out of sorts. She guessed that he was wearing his big brother’s cast-offs and the
n thought that he probably came from one of those huge Irish Catholic families that her mother had told her all about. He only had one eyebrow and he looked to Nadine like one of the children in Planet of the Apes.

  Not surprisingly, none of the other children rushed over to get to know Dig and Nadine when the bell for their first break rang at 10.30 a.m., and consequently they had to make do with each other for company while they sat in the playground.

  ‘Dig,’ stated Nadine, swinging her plump little legs back and forth, ‘that’s a really stupid name. Why are you called Dig?’

  ‘It is not a stupid name. It’s short for Digby.’

  ‘Well, that’s a stupid name, too.’

  ‘No it’s not—it’s French.’

  ‘Yes it is. “Dig”. It’s not a name. It’s a verb.’

  ‘What about you? You can talk. Nadine Kite. That’s not a name, that’s a thing that you fly in the sky.’

  ‘Yes. I do know what a kite is, thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh yes—I bet you’ve never flown one, though, have you? I have. My dad bought it for me. We take it out on Primrose Hill.’

  Nadine fell silent for a second and took an extra big slurp of her Banana Nesquik before shrugging. ‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Kites are for kids. Anyway,’ she continued, changing the subject, ‘how come you’ve only got one eyebrow?’