My Secret Lover

1
     
     
    January
     
    Am I happy?
    Does everyone have thoughts like this
when they’re stuck in a traffic jam, or on a train, or any time really that’s
not quite one place or another? Especially if it’s a special day, like a birthday,
or the first day back to work after the Christmas holidays.
    Another one is...
    Is there something wrong with the
temporary lights? You’re first in the queue and you suddenly wonder why all the
cars behind you are indicating and overtaking, and by the time you’ve worked
out the lights have stuck, the traffic in the opposite direction has taken
advantage, and if you go now there’ll be a head-on collision.
    ...What sort of person am I supposed
to be?
    Is it better to be an aggressive
driver or a patient one? It doesn’t matter what time you get there as long as
you get there, says my mother. But she hasn’t got a job to go to. And she can’t
drive. I’m somewhere in between. I don’t knowingly take risks, but I swear a
lot.
     
    ...I know what sort of person I am. I am an ordinary person. If my life were a How Successful Are You? quiz in a
women’s magazine I would score mostly bs. I’m not an a (brilliant high-achiever
with a slight tendency to be neurotic. Even if you’ve done a full
twenty-eight-day detox, Pilates and home-made pesto, they’re still wondering if
you’re leaving yourself enough Me Time). And I’m not quite a c (lazy slut whose
idea of a dinner party is a bucket of KFC and please keep reading till the
little ads for liposuction at the back). I’m definitely a b (Starts a detox
once or twice a week and lasts until the drink after work, offers freshly made
pasta from the chilled-food section for dinner, signs up and pays for the
Pilates course, but only goes once because it’s the same night as Footballers’
Wives).
    I am towards the high end of
body-mass-ratio range but still within normal. I have a little terraced house,
with a knocked-through downstairs room, which I bought before prices got silly,
a car, a job I love and a boyfriend, whom I’m marrying this summer. For this,
and many other reasons, which my mother would gladly list for you if you were
interested, I am a very lucky girl who should be grateful.
    I am grateful (I tell my
mother in the grumpy voice of a sulky twelve year old which only seems to happen
when she’s around). Then, in the car on the way home, I start thinking, OK, I’m
grateful, but is this really what happiness feels like?
    I thought I would be more grown up by
my age (36). I do always watch the News and Newsnight, and sometimes
even Despatch Box (to be honest, only if I’ve dozed off on the sofa
during Newsnight). I try to get a handle on the Middle East situation,
but I find I’m sitting there wondering how the reporter keeps his shirt so nice
and white amid all the dust and shooting and then he’s saying '…for the Ten
O’clock News, Jerusalem.’
    Faced with a choice of stories on my
home page, my mouse instinctively moves towards
    Weird dreams, what do they mean? and avoids anything that includes the word Zimbabwe. Before I know it, I’m in the middle of a
    How Deep Are You? Quiz
    (answer: b) and it’s then time for
bed.
    I had the weirdest dream last night.
I dreamt that the wedding dress I was trying on turned into a cake. A great
white stiff wedding cake with lots of tiers and, frankly, it looked rather
wonderful, like something by Hussein Chalayan, but was incredibly heavy and
restrictive and as I started to sweat, the icing on the tier beneath my armpits
started to melt, and I woke up to find a big wet patch next to my face where I
had dribbled on my scatter cushion and three backbenchers talking about
fox-hunting on the telly. I think it’s a washable cover.
    Everyone who lives in the suburbs
knows that foxes have swapped countryside for town anyway. They can enjoy a
better quality of life here, more fast-food drive-thrus with brimming rubbish
bins, far less opportunity for vigorous aerobic exercise in the fresh air.
     
    The car behind is beeping at me. The
lights have changed.
    When did that happen?
    I stall, start the engine, stall
again.
    F off your F-ing self.
    This is not an omen for the year
ahead. Definitely not.
     
    *
     
    There’s a pleasant smell of washing
powder and new shoes as we all gather for assembly in the hall. A sudden shaft
of sunlight strikes the windows as the headmaster is talking about being kind
and helping each other. It spotlights a piece of tinsel from the