Lucy Shaw's Not Sure

Lucy Shaw’s Not Sure

Jo Bavington Jones

Lucy Shaw’s Not Sure

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ISBN 978-1-912317-14-1

Copyright © Jo Bavington-Jones, 2017

The moral right of Jo Bavington-Jones to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Book cover design and typesetting by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk

The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

For Sam, my raison d’être.

1

Just like starting over

My decree absolute arrived with that morning’s post. No more Mr. Nisi guy . I sighed. My marriage was absolutely over. I was thirty-four years old, had been separated from my husband for two years, and was now finally, completely divorced.

So, here I was, Lucy Shaw, all five feet eight inches of me, long legs poking out of the white cotton grandad shirt I sometimes wore in bed, golden-brown hair, still ruffled from my pillow, hanging in waves down my back, and green eyes still full of sleep. A bit different from sensible-suited Monday-to-Friday Lucy Shaw, who worked in the accounts department at Horizon Pharmaceuticals.

I really wasn’t sure how I felt about my divorce becoming final. Relieved? Yes, I was relieved to have some sort of closure. But it was also one of the saddest moments of my life. My marriage had failed. I had failed. I didn’t want to feel down – I usually avoided it with a joke or a ready smile for whoever was around at the time. I didn’t want to think about, or be reminded of, things that made me sad, and this legal document in front of me forced me to confront feelings of failure I preferred to keep buried.

I didn’t know whether to round up my girlfriends for a vodka-soaked night on the tiles, or take to my bed with a DVD, a big box of chocolates and an even bigger box of tissues. So it was, feeling decidedly glum and emotionally muddled, that I plodded through to the kitchen where my housemate, Carrie, was making tea.

‘Well, it’s official. I’m a divorcee,’ I said. It had been over two years since my marriage broke down due to ‘irreconcilable differences’ – irreconcilable similarities would have been more accurate if you asked me as the dislike was mutual at the time. The incompatibility that I had refused to see for a long time, had eventually turned to dislike.

‘Oh, Lucy, I’m sorry. I do know how it feels – I’ve been there, remember,’ Carrie replied softly as she ran her fingers through her spiky blonde morning-hair. Carrie was older than me at forty-one and had two grown-up children. Her son had moved into his own place and her daughter had just gone off to university, leaving Carrie alone in the house and looking for, not only company, but a little extra income too. Carrie had a rather disastrous track record with men, and was slow to trust any new man who came on the scene. Petite next to me, but equally full of fun, Carrie and I had hit it off straight away. She did have an air of fragile sadness about her, but she always put her happy face on for the world.

Carrie hugged me and handed me a cup of tea. We went to sit on the sofa in the lounge together, part of our Saturday morning routine, where tulips drooped colourful heads in a vase on the fireplace and the April sunshine filtered into the room through the voile at the window. Carrie’s little house in Maidstone always had fresh flowers, and the drooping heads of the slightly sad-looking tulips suited my mood.

‘I don’t know why I feel so sad after all this time,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve never regretted the split for a minute. I suppose it just makes it so final, so official. I guess I feel like a failure. For a change. Starting over at the age of thirty-four.’

‘Lucy Shaw, you are NOT a failure! You’re a funny, clever, warm and beautiful woman. Rob simply wasn’t right for you. One day you’ll find Mr. Right. In the meantime, just enjoy a few Mr. Right Nows!’

I laughed, but rather half-heartedly.

Why were other people so sure of me? I wondered. I may have been Lucy Shaw by name, but certainly not by nature. All I wanted out of life was to find something, or someone, that would bring me lasting happiness and contentment. I currently had no idea what that might be.

And that was the whole point. Yes, my name was Lucy Shaw, but I wasn’t sure what would make me happy. I hadn’t got a clue, to be honest. That bright April morning, with my dear friend Carrie, at number 5 Victoria Close, a pretty little cul-de-sac on the south side of Maidstone, and with my decree absolute on the dining table in front of me, I was feeling more than a little lost.

I smiled at Carrie ruefully. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just being pathetic. Take no notice. I’ll be fine.’

‘You’re not being pathetic, you’re being human, silly! You’re allowed to feel sad and confused – you were with Rob for half your life. Those feelings don’t just disappear.’

‘I know. You’re right. As ever! I’m just surprised to feel this sad after all this time.’

‘Someone once told me that the end of a marriage is like a death - you have to go through all the different stages of mourning before you can really accept it and move on. It takes as long as it takes. There aren’t any rules.’

‘In that case, I think I just visited the grave and laid a final posy of flowers,’ I sighed.

‘You’ll be fine, Lucy. I just know that wonderful things will come your way.’

‘I wish I had your confidence. Besides, I’m not sure I’d recognise something wonderful if it jumped out and shouted I’m your something wonderful, Lucy Shaw, at the top of its voice, whilst slapping me round the face with a wet fish.’

Carrie laughed. ‘Of course you would, you doughnut.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I replied with yet another sigh. ‘I think maybe Rob was right about me.’

‘What d’you mean? Right about what?’ Carrie asked as she put her now empty mug on the table and wriggled back down into the cushions, tucking her legs under her, and turning more towards me.

Echoing Carrie’s body language, I too curled my legs up and twisted my body to face her directly.

‘Well,’ I began, ‘when Rob and I first split, he said that I’d never be happy. That if he couldn’t make me happy, loving me as much as he did, then no-one would be able to. He said I didn’t know how to accept someone’s love and never would. That I was damaged goods – a product of a broken home, destined to repeat the mistakes of my parents.’ A silent tear rolled down my cheek as I spoke. I had never told anyone this before.

‘I’m sure he was just lashing out – trying to make you feel bad, because he was hurting. He didn’t mean it,’ Carrie said as she gently wiped the tear away with her thumb.

‘I told myself that at the time, but now I’m not so sure. What if he was right, Carrie? What if I don’t know how to be happy? How to love and be loved? What if I’m destined for nothing but one failed relationship after another? I couldn’t bear it!’

‘Oh, Lucy. I don’t believe that for a second. You’re one of the most loving and caring people I know. You were so young when you met Rob – too young – you can’t base the rest of your life on the failure of that one relationship.’

‘God, I hope you’re right, Carrie, but whenever something happens in my life, or I meet someone new, Rob’s words come back to taunt me. It scares me. Everything scares me.’

‘Oh dear! What can I do to cheer you up?’ Carrie asked, recognising that she needed to try and snap me out of the blue mood that was threatening. ‘Do you want to hit the town tonight? We could drink and dance off your blues. Vodka and Motown cures all known ailments!’ Carrie loved Motown music and it always lifted her mood no end. Carrie sometimes got a little down at weekends, without the busyness of her job as a legal secretary to keep her mind occupied, and away from the sadness of her own failed marriage.

‘Thanks, Carrie, but I don’t think I’ll be in the mood. I’ll see how I feel later.’ Ultimately, the final and official failure of my marriage was not something I wanted to celebrate. ‘I think I’m just going to go back to bed and wallow for a while.’ I hugged Carrie and headed back down the cellar stairs to what was now my room, but had formerly belonged to Carrie’s daughter. The cool darkness of the underground room seemed a fitting atmosphere for wallowing. Well, it was a Saturday morning, thank goodness, so I didn’t need to go to work and I could just indulge my self-pity.

Putting on my snuggliest PJs, and armed with a big box of Maltesers I had stashed for an emergency such as this, I crawled back under the duvet and settled down to watch City of Angels, which always reduced me to tears when Meg Ryan’s character dies. Great choice of film, Lucy. What about watching Love Story next?

Ninety minutes or so later I was surrounded by snotty, tear-sodden Kleenex and my face was suitably red and puffy. I also had a thumping headache and felt slightly nauseous after consuming so much chocolate. I guess the end result would have been pretty much the same if I’d taken the alternative course of action, and gone out drinking. Why was it that crying always gave me such a terrible headache? People always say Have a good cry, you’ll feel so much better. ‘No I bloody won’t. I’ll feel like death warmed up, and look like a blotchy frog.’

I wondered if Rob, my now ex-husband, had also received his decree that morning and if he was feeling the same as me. I could picture him in the house we’d shared, sitting at the kitchen table with the letter open in front of him, and our dog Jasper’s head resting on his thigh, brown eyes turned up to Rob’s face, trying to offer him comfort. I hoped he was OK. I would always care about the man who had been my first love. In spite of his harsh words when we’d split.

I was just sixteen when we met, Rob was eighteen, and he was my first serious boyfriend. He wasn’t overly tall and not a particularly handsome man, but he made me laugh and, more importantly, he made me feel safe and loved. We got married when I was twenty-one, and had the whole ‘white wedding’ thing and I would never forget the pride on his face and his blue eyes shining as I walked up the aisle towards him. Deep down I think I knew, as I made that walk, that I was doing the wrong thing, but I wasn’t sure, and I could never have left Rob standing at the altar anyway.

The problem was, as I only realised some years into the marriage, that I had fallen in love with the idea of being in love and not really with Rob himself. Coming from a broken home as I did, I thought that all I wanted was to be with someone who would never let me down. And Rob never did. But he also didn’t let me grow and flourish as a person; he wrapped me up in cotton wool and stood me on a pedestal, doing everything for me, and protecting me from the big bad world. He’d never let me put petrol in my car, and always drove if we went out together. When I had tried to assert myself within the relationship, he somehow managed to make me feel that my efforts weren’t quite good enough and that it was better to let him take care of everything. It was easier to let him get on with it than to rock the boat of our relationship. Over time, though, I felt more and more stifled and came to resent Rob and to see him as controlling. I suppose those festering feelings of resentment destroyed whatever love I had for him.

My guess was that, on receipt of the divorce papers, Rob would have taken our golden retriever, Jasper, for a long, long walk and spent some time quietly contemplating his lost love and what an absolute bitch I was for ending our eleven-year marriage. It had been hard leaving Jasper with Rob, but as Rob was staying in the marital home, and I wasn’t sure exactly what my living arrangements would be, I felt I had no choice. And Rob adored Jasper. I think he might have fallen apart without him. Having a dog, like having a child, gives you a reason to get out of bed every morning, whether you feel like it or not.

The trouble was I did feel like an absolute bitch at times. I didn’t know if the guilt would ever go away. Rob and I had been teenage sweethearts and after four years he had proposed to me. We were together for sixteen, not unhappy but rather unfulfilling, years. I had grown older within the relationship but I hadn’t really grown up. I had let Rob take care of everything. To the extent that when we split up I had indeed never even put petrol in my car.

And so when we separated, two years earlier, I was thirty-two years old and absolutely pathetic. I’d been terrified of what lay ahead and had no idea how I was going to manage, but I was also exhilarated and excited at the prospect of venturing out into the big wide world on my own. I’d known deep down I’d done the right thing. I just wish I hadn’t had to hurt someone I would always care very deeply about in the process. My beautiful Jasper. I felt bad about hurting Rob too of course. (Oh, ha ha, Lucy. Why did I always feel the need to hide the hurt behind a great chunk of funny? I wondered. I absolutely hated myself for hurting Rob and just hoped that he could forgive me more easily than I could forgive myself.)

Feeling the emotional equivalent of a wrung-out dishcloth, I drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep…

2

Later that day

I woke up at about tea-time that same day, still feeling a little sad but surprisingly refreshed, and no longer so much in need of sympathy. Just tea. I hurried up the stairs in search of Carrie and found her painting her nails a vivid shade of red.

‘Fancy a cuppa, Carrie? Or shall we move straight on to the vodka?!’

Carrie laughed. ‘Glad to see you’re feeling better.’

‘Yes, I’m happy to say I am. Could we have that night out after all? Well, it’s a girl’s prerogative to change her mind.’

‘Absolutely! I could do with letting my hair down after the week I’ve had at work.’

‘Yay! Thank you, lovely lady! I’m so glad I’ve got you!’

‘No need to thank me. What are friends for after all? Now, do you want me to paint your nails?’

‘Yes, in Scarlet Woman please,’ knowing full well that was the colour she was applying.

Sitting in companionable silence while our nails dried, my thoughts drifted back to six months earlier when I’d first met Carrie. I’d answered her ‘room to let’ ad and had the good sense to choose Carrie’s place over the one with a ‘large, airy room overlooking established gardens’ in a ‘spacious and well-appointed house’. They neglected to mention that the occupants all locked their bedroom doors and that the house was about as welcoming as Rob’s mum when she heard about our split. Carrie’s house might have been small, and my room might have had more than a little resemblance to a dungeon, but it was home. I never felt like a lodger in Carrie’s house.

‘Right! Time to go and make myself look beautiful!’ I announced, coming out of my reverie.

‘You always look beautiful, Lucy.’

‘Aw! Thanks! I’m just trying to keep up with you!’ Blowing Carrie a kiss, and before the mutual appreciation society got chundersome, I took myself back downstairs to get ready.

Listening to music was always part of getting ready for a night out. The right music got you in the right mood. That or the vodka, anyway. My music of choice was Club Classics as they made me want to dance and I boogied around my bedroom as I thought about what to wear. I was trying to be as upbeat as the music, but sad thoughts connected to Rob and our relationship kept sneaking up on me. We’d often talked about having children, but we’d never wanted a child at the same time. Rob had seemed happy enough with that, but I was always conscious of my biological clock ticking. Suddenly I heard it tick now, and with an insistent loudness. I went to turn the music up, as if to drown out the sound.

Ever since my thirtieth birthday, I’d been having to turn up music more and more to smother the increasingly pregnant tick, tock, TICK, TOCK. It just wasn’t working! If only I could take the batteries out. I’d already tried smothering the thing with chocolate chip cookies to no avail. Maybe I could drown the bugger in vodka, I thought, taking a swig.

Hoping to paint the town red, I knew I’d probably have to settle for more of a rosy glow. I’d never been much of a drinker, though I began drinking more when Rob and I were separated, but even now I tended only to consume enough to give me the courage to go and dance. I loved dancing. I had no idea if I was really any good, but I regretted all my sober years when I was too inhibited to dance in public.

Finally deciding on what to wear, I squeezed into my denim cat-suit, slipped my feet into some killer heels, a final squirt of perfume, a last look in the mirror to check my make-up and I was ready to go. My feet were objecting even by the time I reached the top of the cellar stairs, but I knew that the vodka would soon reach them and they’d be nicely anaesthetised. I’d be able to walk home quite happily at 2 a.m. after hours of shaking my booty at Raspberry Fools nightclub. It would only be when I took off my sandals before tackling the stairs to the cellar that I would realise the straps had gouged holes in my little toes and I had several impressive blisters. Still, I’d know better next time. Yeah right!

Carrie was looking as fabulous as ever with her slim figure and spiky blonde hair. She may have had two grown-up children but she still looked amazing. We were quite a contrast with me being a tall brunette with rather ample… er… shall we say assets? I felt as though I’d been friends with Carrie forever and we always had such good times together. We poured ourselves another drink: vodka and lemonade for me (I still didn’t really like the taste of alcohol) and vodka and tonic for Carrie.

Time for the next part of our Saturday night ritual: watching a talent show for singers. There were a couple of guys on it we both adored and I had a huge crush on one particular singer who was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. Danny Campbell: my ideal man. When he sang ‘Second Look’, I knew that he was really singing it to me. Yeah, in my dreams! We may have been two supposedly quite mature women (pause for side-splitting laughter and a spray of vodka) but we were not above drooling over pop wannabes and cackling about ‘moist gussets’!

Then it was time to head off to our first watering hole, a High Street pub with cheap drinks aplenty and the right kind of pre-party atmosphere. We were old enough to have given birth to most of the other patrons of this particular establishment, but we could more than hold our own. Could probably hold our drink better too.

It was a beautiful spring evening and the twenty-minute, mainly downhill, walk into town passed in a whirl of giggling and chatting. Before we knew it we had arrived at a Wetherspoons. There were bouncers on the door, checking IDs. Perish the thought that any underage drinkers should gain entry to the premises. Maybe they only looked about thirteen to us. For some unfathomable reason we were not asked for ID, just ushered through the door to join the seething mass of bodies queuing at the bar.

I think one of the reasons it was so cheap to drink at Wetherspoons was because it took so long to get served that you didn’t have time for too many drinks before it was time to head off to your next destination. We finally reached the front line and started jostling for position at the bar. That was where it could come in handy being not only a woman, but a buxom one at that, unless the bar tender also was. Eventually, drinks purchased, we did a bit of people watching. Wetherspoons was a great place for this as it had an upstairs balcony where you could get an eagle-eye view of the meat market taking place below. We headed up there and passed the time doing a David Attenborough-style commentary on the mating rituals taking place below.

‘Here we see a prime example of the male of the species, the Greater-Spotted Pimple Bird, doing his best to attract a mate,’ I said in my best bird-spotter voice.

‘Watch as he struts over to his chosen female, trying to look cool as he slicks his hand through his hair,’ Carrie giggled.

‘The female feigns disinterest, flicking her long blonde hair back and turning away. She’s clearly playing hard to get – the male will have to pull out all the stops.’

‘Undeterred, the male circles her and attempts to make eye contact. He smiles his sexiest smile. Oh dear! He may have blown it! That wasn’t sexy at all.’

‘But the female is giggling now, sucking provocatively on the straw in her bright red cocktail. She’s clearly interested.’

‘Or desperate!’ Carrie and I announced simultaneously. We were so on the same wavelength.

Clinking our glasses together, we laughed and toasted the couple we’d been watching. They were actually kind of sweet, and I think I did sigh a little enviously. That first connection with someone was such a rush. I wanted to feel it again.

10 p.m. arrived and it was time to move on to Raspberry Fools. I suppose you’d call it a nightclub, but really it was a pub with a dance floor and plenty of cheesy music. You could guarantee they’d play S Club 7 and Steps at least once during the night which were right up our dance street. And, better still, it was full of men. Wonderful, gullible and oh-so-predictable, men!

By day, Carrie was a legal secretary and I worked in accounts. But on a night out, Carrie became a solicitor (of the legal variety) and I was transformed into a sex therapist. We had supposedly met when