‘Well, yes, maybe.’
‘Exactly.’ I feel extremely relieved to have made my extremely sensible and valid point, and now hopefully we can have a nice evening talking about anything but this.
But no. ‘Continuing with the driving test thing,’ Lizzie says, ‘there would come a point where you’d taken a certain number of tests and you’d decide that you were never going to succeed. But there would be a catalyst for that. After investing all that time and effort you wouldn’t want to just walk away. Maybe the catalyst would just be that you’d failed one test too many. Or maybe something would make you think there was a particular thing about you that meant you personally were never going to be a good driver. What was your catalyst for coming to this realisation about relationships?’
Lizzie is a very, very good friend of mine and that is why I’m humouring her and continuing with this annoying conversation because I really don’t like analysing myself.
‘Well,’ I begin. And then I repeat what I told Jake, about my parents and my past relationships.
The timer for the lasagne goes off just as I finish and Lizzie stands up to take it out of the oven and the salad out of the fridge, before sitting back down.
‘You know I love you and respect your wisdom and life choices,’ she says. ‘But this is silly. It isn’tyou, it’sthem.’
She stands up again and begins to get plates and cutlery out, waving away my offer of help.
‘Your parents,’ she says as she places the lasagne dish in the middle of the table and hands me a large spoon. ‘You know how both my parents are pretty much tone deaf but I can sing?’
I nod. That’s an understatement. Her parents really are not at all musical, and she has the voice of an actual angel. She was a professional opera singer for a couple of years but then decided it involved too little money and too much travel for a happy adult life and became an accountant who sings in a very high-level amateur choir and occasionally does recordings for money.
‘So.’ She pushes the salad towards me. ‘I did not inherit my musical tendencies from my parents. Obviously my grandmother was a great singer—’ her father’s mother was a fairly famous professional opera singer ‘—and I probably inherited it from her. Things can skip generations. And you are the product of your parents but genes are complicated and you are a completely different person from both your parents, as we all are.’
I nod and pile salad onto my plate before saying, ‘I totally agree that people are not carbon copies of their parents, and everyone is unique. But in this instance it’s clear from my life experience that Ihaveinherited my parents’ relationship flaws. Just like it’s clear from your life experience that you might not have inherited your voice from your parents but you did inherit your hair from your mother.’
Lizzie and her mum both have the most amazing thick, very curly, auburn hair.
Lizzie says, ‘Okay,’ and takes a large mouthful. When she’s swallowed, she says, ‘Soooo. Talk me through your first ever relationship.’
‘But you know about it already?’
‘Yes, but humour me.’
‘Fine but only because you’re a very good friend and you’re feeding me very delicious lasagne and salad with very nice wine.’
And then I tell her again about how I met my first boyfriend in sixth form and he dumped me two days before I was supposed to be going on holiday with his family and took another girl. Who had been until that moment a friend of mine. I was still a bit of a mess when I arrived at uni a month later, and my new uni friends very much helped pick up the pieces.
‘And is he happily married?’ Lizzie does know the answer to her question.
‘Nope, serial cheater who cheated on the girl he cheated on me with and is already on his third wife.’
‘Exactly.’ Lizzie raises her hands likeHallelujah. ‘Heis the problem, not you. You are just one of many women he has cheated on over the years. I bet most if not all of the others have not subsequently sworn off romance.’
‘Yesbutthe rest of his romance victims probably haven’t had a billionotherrelationship fails.’
‘Fine. Talk me through your next relationship.’
We spend an uncomfortably long time going through every relationship – short and longer – that I’ve ever had, in order.
Ireallywouldn’t be doing this if Lizzie weren’t such a good friend and didn’t clearly have my best interests at heart. And, also, in some ways, it’s quite good.
Because, each time, Lizzie concludes that it was either him, orus, as inwejust weren’t right for each other, or it was the wrong time, or, in fact, a myriad of other reasons, none of which are that my relationship fails were becauseIcan’t have relationships.
Obviously Ican’t, but it’s actually kind of nice to have it pointed out by a straight-talking friend that a lot of the failuresI’ve been carrying with me asmyfailures were in fact someone else’s mistakes or downright shittiness, or an ‘ourfailure’ situation, or just one of those things.
‘So.’ Lizzie takes a long drink of the water we both now have because we finished the bottle of wine and agreed that we do not want hangovers tomorrow and moved on to water. Then she rolls her neck and stretches her shoulders before adjusting her position, curled up in the corner of the sofa, which we moved to about halfway through the analysis of my relationship demises. ‘Where have we got to?’
‘We’ve got to the end,’ I tell her.
‘Orthe beginning,’ she says.
