Chapter Two

When I first met Lucinda I was with Janette.

Janette had no neuroses whatsoever, and somehow succeeded in making mine seem normal, which was nice because I didn’t have to justify things like cutting out coupons from the Iceland catalogue or ordering hot water in cafés.

And although it made me a bit nauseous every time she showed me something she’d bought – Janette could have been the official spokesperson of the retail therapy association, if such an organisation existed – it helped that she hid the receipts. And anyway it was her dad’s credit card she was using, so the sickness I felt was mainly a vicarious one, one of solidarity with her father, though from her vague descriptions he didn’t seem the sort who even looked at his credit card bills.

I went out with Janette for nearly three years, but it felt like a lot less: she was not very demanding. She made life seem effortless.

Most of our generation slogged their way through university, fighting off regularly-occurring twinges of doubt and uncertainty or, at the very least, nihilistic laziness. The ones that actually graduated now trudge in and out of succession of soul-sucking jobs – and, of these, the lucky ones somehow manage to ‘find their place’ on the career ladder, reconciling rather than sacrificing job satisfaction with an adequate income, their ideals with their company’s. And, like I said, those are the lucky ones.

But Janette? Janette flew through university in a blur of unhesitating efficiency, landed her first serious in the summer after her first year of university and was recruited by one of the top marketing consultancy firms in the country before she even graduated. All of this without losing any poise.

Meanwhile I was doing an internship at Cold Turkey, an arts magazine where gaining experience largely amounted to filing press releases and printing address labels. The job had been Janette’s idea. She said it would help ‘get my foot in the door’: in her head, I would be the one doing the magazine’s cover shoots one day.

She put together my cv, she wrote the cover letter – she even picked out what I should wear for the interview. And, when it all proved rather disappointing, she went about filling my fridge with organic, often gourmet, groceries and making desserts from scratch (she only knew how to make tiramisu’ and cheesecake, but it was, as I assured her, the thought that counted).

Within a few months of our meeting she had moved in with me. My rent was halved, the flat transformed and my fears (unemployment, degenerative diseases, dying alone – nothing original) held in check: contained.

A typical conversation between the two of us would go something like this.

Me (walking in the room from the toilet, magazine in hand): Your magazine says I’m going to get cancer, probably.

Janette (sitting on the couch, blackberrying away): What magazine?

Me: The one in the toilet. The health one. It says your chances of getting bowel cancer are higher if you eat processed meats. Did you know sausages were processed?

Janette (realising the conversation is likely to be a long one, sighing and putting down her blackberry): Of course they’re processed. Did you think they were a part of the pig’s anatomy?

Me (ignoring the comment): And hot dogs… And bacon… And sliced ham… And roast beef… And beef twizzlers… I’m going to die.

Janette (patiently): But you don’t eat any of those things.

Me: Anymore. I don’t eat them anymore. But before I met you? I practically lived on value bacon and sausages.

Janette (slapping her thighs and getting up): You’re right. Let’s go for a run. Get those processed meats out of your system. Or off your mind, at least.

Me (sorrowfully): It’s too late. My ass is already bleeding.

Janette (yelling from the bedroom): If your ass is bleeding, you have hemorrhoids, Stan. Not cancer. You can’t die from hemorrhoids. Now: are you coming running or not?

Needless to say, I drove her insane.

And, by the same token, it was she who kept me from going insane.

Any guy, no matter how absorbed in his own neuroses, will agree that the sight of his girlfriend, topless, playing sexy housewife in hold-ups and heels – not to mention the aroma of imported pesto – when he comes home, can cure the worst ills.

The ill from which I was suffering was the sense my soul was being eaten away, bit by bit, with each working day. Janette was my antidote – my palliative – my drug.

You clock in every morning and work under fluorescent lights and leave the office when it’s already dark, but you can take some small consolation from the fact that you have a girl with perfectly rounded breasts who is up-to-date and in tune with the outside world (she didn’t read one paper – she read them all) yet singularly devoted to you, who wears lacy underwear because she likes it and only gets weepy when very, very drunk.

At night I would cling to her with the fierceness of a newborn at his mother’s teat or, simply, a five-year-old gripping sweatily at his consolation prize.

Being with Janette was three years of such small consolations.

I miss her egg and cress sandwiches.

I miss her slurred rudeness in the pub (She’d grown up with three brothers, she was used to talking back, ‘demanding respect.’ She got a kick out of it, you could tell.)

So Janette. Still at university when we first started going out, career mapped out before even receiving her graduation certificate, promotion six weeks into first job, second promotion and move to headquarters in New York within four months. Better than her brothers, better than anything Daddy could have hoped for.

But.

I hate the States without having even been there.

And Baby, eventually, has to be weaned.

So bye-bye Janette.

Bye-bye ironed pyjamas and gourmet coffee.

Bye-bye sex under suffused lighting and green potted plants with glossy leaves.

Bye-bye.