The Perfect 10

‘Never.’

‘But you understand that it will need to be confronted, at some point?’

‘Not really. It’s over. It’s done. I’ve told you what happened. I don’t want to think about it. You could do with some new rugs.’

‘All you’ve told me is that a child was snatched and you helped get him back – there must be more to it than that.’

‘It wouldn’t kill you to co-ordinate in here. It would make it easier.’

‘Make what easier?’

‘Focusing. Your books aren’t even in height order. I can see one shoe poking out from under that chair. That’s off-putting.’

‘Try and cut off from that. What do you want to talk about today, if not the incident?’

‘Where’s the other shoe?’

‘What do you want to talk about today?’

‘My life is too spotless. I want romance!’

‘Do you feel we may have covered that already?’

‘No.’

‘We have gone over it in most of your sessions.’

‘It’s not resolved. In my head.’

‘Which parts?’

‘All of it. I’m still having the daydream.’

‘Which is perfectly healthy. Daydreams aren’t necessarily harmful. They can simply be a manifestation of our hopes, harmless wish fulfilment. It is only when we find them disturbing that –’

‘Maybe if I told you again?’

‘Is it the same one as before?’

‘No, it’s different.’

‘Has Adrian made a reappearance?’

He sees me bristle like some old hen at the sound of the name.

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘I’m just trying to work out how is it different, Sunny.’

‘Let me just tell you. I’m having an argument with my tall, handsome husband – who doesn’t exist – and we are bickering about unimportant things, but he can’t be mad at me for long. It’s a fight about who will drive to the dinner party we are going to. He is wearing a chunky-knit sweater. It doesn’t descend into any real kind of nastiness. It’s not one of those kinds of arguments, the way that people can be to each other, spitting out unforgivable venomous spite … You know. We don’t do that. Because my husband – my imaginary husband – loves me too much, and I him. I know he will never leave me, with a coward’s note about his lust for his secretary. And he knows that I will never get drunk and perform a sexual indiscretion on his brother – he has a younger brother, reckless and attractive, possibly bisexual, always off trekking in the Himalayas, or skydiving. The point is this: we just can’t be unfaithful to each other, in my mind, because unfaithful is for other people with weak relationships, common relationships, relationships that stream past me daily. We don’t score points, I don’t demean his manhood – he is average in length but has great girth – and he doesn’t take food out of my hands for my waistline’s good. We don’t want to trade up or trade down or trade each other in. We are in love.’

‘I see. How exactly is that different to the previous daydream?’

‘We never fought about who would drive before. Because in my daydream I hadn’t passed my test. But I passed it last week in my dream. Really, I’ve been driving for years.’

‘Congratulations anyway.’

‘Thank you. Parallel parked.’

‘Why do you think you still want to talk about this? Why do you think this daydream is in any way unhealthy?’

‘Because I don’t think I understand love! And, seriously, it’s becoming more pressing! I think I have a picture of it in my head that isn’t real, and that is going to stop me ever actually falling in love, or even recognising it! I thought I was in love with Adrian, and that was five years of my life … but now …’

‘Do you think that you might know love when you find it, and that it will replace the daydreams?’

‘No! I think that while my perception of love stays the same I won’t be able to see it in reality. I think I am emotionally unhealthy in that respect.’

‘And what would you say your perception of love is?’

‘Love is the thing that keeps you safe at night. Love doesn’t hurt.’

My therapist adjusts his glasses. He looks as if he is in his late fifties, but he is sixty-two, with dark brown hair smeared in grey. He wears a jumper and jeans. The jeans are old man jeans – they don’t really fit, in any acceptable way. His jumper is navy and cream and claret, diagonals and squares and lines. It doesn’t really fit either. His clothes just sit on him. He doesn’t write things down often, although he has a pad and a pen on the desk behind him in case of emergencies. He doesn’t have a deep or soothing voice. It’s quite bland. Some days I find it annoying. He sounds like a bank clerk, or a travel agent, or any of those faceless voices at the end of a phone line who just want to put you on hold. He crosses his legs. He always sits in the same position, and rubs his left elbow with his right hand every few minutes. He is divorced, but has a long-term girlfriend now, although they don’t live together. I have been seeing him for eight months. It costs me eighty pounds a session, and I come once a week, on a Monday afternoon, for an hour and a half. The ‘incident’, as I am now referring to it, was yesterday, but I’m feeling fine about it already.

I talk with my hands. I grab my knees and pull them up close to my chest. I do that a lot now that I can. I always sit in the big low chair, although there is a sofa. I scrape my fingers from the front to the back of my head when I am really thinking. Not hard, just to feel my hair. Today I am wearing jeans that fit, with a feint line that runs vertically down the middle of each leg, which is slimming. My black shirt is soft but has a large stiff collar that sits slightly away from my neck, avoiding foundation smears. I wear clear lip-gloss. I apply my mascara heavily at the roots of my eyelashes to give a lengthening effect without clogging the tips. When I see photos of myself I never look the way I think I might. My nose is slightly longer than I imagine it to be, my cheekbones slightly higher. I think of myself with a big round face, but it is actually quite angular now. I have the ‘first signs of grey’ in dark brown hair, but I colour them out so you wouldn’t know, but then the world is turning grey these days. I look anywhere between twenty-six and thirty-two, depending on who you ask. I am actually twenty-eight. Everybody says I look younger now I’ve lost the weight, but in my head at least, I look exactly the same.

I don’t think I have ever been in love, which is the reason I started seeing my therapist. He doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem, but at twenty-eight I beg to differ. Of course, previously, when I hadn’t taken control of the fat situation, I couldn’t have seen him, for fear of the criticism. But now that I can say, no matter what he throws at me, I’m not hiding any more, I’m working hard, I’m being a good girl and I’m on a diet, we can talk about the possibility of fat being the problem. Now I am winning this battle I can consider dropping those walls of defence. He thinks I have bigger issues to confront, but he won’t tell me what they are exactly. We have to ‘find them’ together. I enjoy our time, though. It’s nice just to blurt it all out – things that you can’t say to the people in your life, who would be upset, or concerned, by the rubbish in your head.

‘Do you feel under pressure to fall in love, Sunny?’

My therapist is trying a new tack today, it would seem. Good for him. He must be so bored with me by now.

‘No. It’s completely the opposite. I have never had any pressure, from anybody, to date or to marry. Nobody. Which is a relief, of course. I think they are all just too embarrassed to say anything. My mother doesn’t even meddle – how are you, still single? Why aren’t you seeing anybody? Your standards are too high! None of that. No pressure at all.’

‘Do you see her often?’

‘My mother? She comes to visit every couple of weeks, and vents about my father, and his obsession with the car parking spaces in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose … I think all men of that generation eventually become obsessed with supermarket car parks. Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you’ve got a couple of years yet.’

‘We were talking about your mother.’

‘Yes. She comes to see me, on the train because my dad doesn’t like her driving the car – she mounts kerbs like a crazy woman – and she asks me to make her a cup of milky tea and then we chat about other people’s lives really. With a feigned interest, at best. We don’t mention mine.’

‘Do you feel that she is interested in your life?’

‘Well, sometimes she’ll ask about work, but only how I am getting on financially, whether it makes me happy working for myself. She doesn’t like to talk about the nature of my business – not that she officially disapproves of sex toys: she watches Channel Four.’