It’s Not Me, It’s You

When she put her key in the door, there was the familiar bump, scrape and snuffle of their dog Parsnip on the other side. Paul, obviously glad of the distraction, shushed and petted him, making Delia want to scream: Don’t be nice to the dog, you huge bastard faker of niceness.

Parsnip was a tatty old incontinent Labrador-Spaniel cross they’d got from a rescue centre, seven years ago.

‘We can’t place this one, he pisses,’ the man had told them, as they stroked the sad, googly eyed, snaggle-toothed Parsnip. ‘Could that be because you tell people he pisses?’ Paul said. ‘We have to,’ the man replied. ‘Otherwise you’ll just bring him back. His name should be Boomerang, not Parsnip.’

‘No bladder control and named after a root vegetable. Poor sod,’ Paul said, and sighed, looking at Delia. ‘I think he’s coming home with us, isn’t he?’

And right there was why Delia fell in love with Paul. Funny, kind, Paul, who understood the underdog – and was sleeping with someone else.

Delia pulled her clanking work bag from her shoulder and dropped onto the leather sofa, the oxblood Chesterfield she’d once spent all day pecking at an eBay auction to win. She didn’t have the will to take her coat off. Paul threw his on the arm of the sofa.

He asked her in hushed tones if she wanted a drink, and again she felt like she hadn’t been given a copy of the script.

Should she start screaming now? Later? Was the drink offer outrageous, should she tell him he couldn’t have one? She simply shook her head, and heard the opening of cupboards, the plink of the glass on the worktop, the clink of the bottle. The glug of … whisky? She could tell Paul took a hard swig before he re-entered the room.

He sat down heavily on the frayed yellow velvet sofa, at a right angle to where she was sitting.

‘Say something, Dee.’ He sounded gratifyingly shaky.

‘What am I supposed to say? And don’t call me Dee.’

Silence. Apart from the clatter of Parsnip’s unclipped toenails on tiles, as he skittered back from the kitchen and settled into his basket in the hallway.

She was expected to open this conversation?

‘How did it start?’

Paul stared at the fireplace. ‘She came into the bar one night.’

The same way I did, Delia thought.

‘When?’

‘About three months ago.’

‘And?’

‘We got chatting.’

There was a pause. Paul had a cardiac arrest pallor again. It looked as if giving this account was as bad as the original discovery. Good.

‘You got chatting, and next thing you know, your penis is inside her?’

‘I never meant for this to happen, Dee … Delia. It’s like some nightmare alternate reality. I can’t believe it myself.’

‘How did you end up shagging her?!’ Delia screamed and Paul almost started with fright. Offstage, Parsnip gave a small squeak. Paul put his glass down with a bump, and his palms together in his lap.

‘She kept coming in. We flirted. Then there was a Friday lock-in, with her friends. She came and found me when I was bottling up. I knew she liked me but … it was a total shock.’

‘You had sex with her in the store cupboard?’

‘No!’

‘You did, didn’t you?’

‘No, I absolutely didn’t,’ Paul said, without quite enough conviction, shaking his head. Delia knew the answer he wouldn’t give: not full sex. But more than a kiss. What Ann called mucky fumbles.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Celine.’

A sexy name. A cool name. Celine created visions of some bobbed, Gitane-smoking Left Bank beauty in black cigarette pants.

Oh God, this hurt. A fresh wound every time, as if she was being whipped by someone who knew exactly how long to leave the sting to burn before lashing again.

‘She’s French?’

‘No …’ He met her eyes. ‘Her mum likes Celine Dion.’

If Paul thought he could risk cute ‘you’d like her, you’d be friends’ touches, with information that had come from pillow talk, Delia feared she’d get violent towards him.

‘How old is she?’

Paul dropped his eyes again. ‘She’s twenty-four.’

‘Twenty-four?! That’s pathetic.’ Delia had never disliked her own age, but now she boiled with insecurity at the twenty-fourness of being twenty-four, compared to her woolly old thirty-three. She’d never worried that men liked younger women, and yet here they were, living the cliché.

Twenty-four. One year older than Delia had been when she met Paul. He’d traded her in. Ten-year anniversary – time to find someone ten years younger.

‘How many times have you had sex?’

Delia had never wondered if she was the kind of person who’d want to know nothing, or everything, when in this situation. Turned out, it was everything.

‘I don’t know.’

‘So many you’ve lost track?’

‘I didn’t keep count.’

‘Same thing.’

A pause. So much sex Paul couldn’t quantify it. She could probably tell him how many times they’d slept together this year, if she thought about it.

‘Where did you have sex with her?’

‘Her house. Jesmond. She’s a mature student.’

Delia could picture it; she’d lived there as a student too. Lightbulb twisted with one of those metallic Habitat garlands that looked like a cloud of silvered butterflies. Crimson chilli fairy lights draped like a necklace across the headboard. Ikea duvet. Bare bodies underneath it, giggling. Groaning. She felt sick again.