Deluded Size Five

It is, when I think about it, incredibly distressing that the only person I can rely on is the one whom I sleep with. Other clients? They just screw me over. Honestly. Today has not been a good day. I hate new people—I have to smile and meet them over lunch. It’s a good strategy, it’s pretty failsafe as long as the food works, and I’ve regular haunts by now, but I’ve been spending too much time with Patience. The result of having too much time with Patience is having no more time for people: not in a, I’m-so-wrapped-up-in-my-love-for-you-I’m-binded-to-the-sad-universe sort of way, heaven forbid, but more because other people are stupid, and it’s perfectly polite, when in Patience’s company, to think this. Every time I have to sit and wait for some plot-challenged, tie wearing earnest-type, I become a little truer and a little pettier, and it feels a little better every time.

Half an hour. This one is half an hour late and that seems like enough reason to decline them, unless they’ve an unexpected-birth-of-triplets level of good reason or are otherwise too bruised to show. Then, I might reconsider. This is just boring.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—ah!”

So that’s what it sounds like when you’re in your thirties and fall over. Ouch. It was certainly diverting, though saying so might be unfair. She might have hurt herself. I won’t lose anything by standing and seeing what I can do, since the place has gone silent, otherwise, and everyone seems to be collectively Not Looking.

I look. She’s a mess, and is she wearing shoes three sizes too small? Yes, she is. Are they magenta and stiletto-y and incongruous with the jeans and oversized nightmare of a jumper? Yes, absolutely. Oh, the poor tragic darling. I hold out a hand. “Here, come on.”

She takes it and hauls herself up, wincing. Okay, so she isn’t completely stupid. She’s taking off the shoes. “Impulse buy.”

Because she likes pain? “So saying they were a silly idea is moot, then? Come and sit down.”

She takes my chair. “Thank you,” she mumbles, staring at the table. She looks like she’s going to cry. “God, this is embarrassing.”

“Yep. A lot of things are. Did you get to order a coffee before you fell over?”

“Now, listen. Thank you, but I really ought...”

People never let me do nice things to them. Why is it that peope never let me do nice things for them. Can’t they see it’s partly to make me feel good? For goodness sake. “You need to sit down for five minutes.” I stand. “I’ll get you a tea. Don’t argue. Unless you don’t like tea.”

When I come back with the two steaming pot-cup contraptions, Madame Deluded Size Five looks less like she’s going to dissolve. “Here. It’s loose. I’ve been bullied into accepting nothing less, these days.”

“You really don’t need to do anything—”

“—no, I don’t. So just smile and say thanks.”

She glares at me. It would be a lot more effective if she wore glasses that made her face look a little less small and chipmunk round. “You’re a bit of a bully yourself,” she says.

“I’m an editor with an awol new client. I needed someone to bully and you fell right in. Literally. Why did you buy those?”

“Eyed them for weeks,” she says, rolling her own eyes. “By the time I had the...had the balls to buy them, my size wasn’t in any more, but I just had to do something, and they were looking at me.” That stumbled over profanity was very cute. She’s a sort of defensive I recognize. Actually, I just recognize her. No idea from where, though.

“Nothing worse than a frustrated impulse buy. Actually, there is one thing. When my divorce came through I impulse bought and ate a whole chocolate cake by myself. The neasea? Horrifying.

She laughs, surprised and shaky. “I threw a cake at his head?” she offers.

“Much better idea!” Now she looks like she’s going to cry again, oh, honestly. “Stop looking so guilty!”

She starts, bites her lip. Ho hum. “Do I know you?” Thank god. One of us asked it. “Do you have a kid who goes to...”

Realisation, to use the awful, awful cliché, dawns with rosy-bloody-fingers over the eastern windowsill of my mind. “Kids, like I tell Ala, are baby goats.”

“Ah! Philipa can’t stop talking about her ‘New Friend Ala.’ You must be Patience, then...”

Never in my wildest nightmares. “No, sweetheart,” I say. She looks nervous enough to actually need endearments, and I can’t help but mock, a little. “I’m Brigid. Brigid-ex-Gallagher Lewis. Ala’s other mother.”

She flinches a little at, ‘other mother.’ Always a good test. I do not expect, after that small moment, for her to start laughing. “‘Ex-Gallagher?’ Oh, dear. You’ve just proven exactly how many Arthurian stories Phil’s demanded, since I heard that as Excalibur.”

“Ala loves those stories! And I do rather like lakes.” That last bit proves I have been spending too much time with Mallory and Patience both.

“Well, so does my Phil. Um...the stories, I mean. I can never get her to swim...anyway; I think they must play at them all day, from what I hear. Oh, I’m so glad I wasn’t hallucinating.”

“Except about your shoe size?” Could not help self. Quite simple.

“Except,” she manages, calmly enough, “my shoe size. I’m Lydia. Lydia...um...ex-Faraday Hawthorne.”

She looks so wretched I can’t help but feel for her. “Hawthorne is an infinitely superior name.”