My Secret Lover

vocabulary:
Snowboarding, Three Hills, Luge, Skeleton and Half Pipe. I love them all. And I
am probably one of the only people in the UK who’s glad that Salt Lake City is
so far west that most of the events don’t start until after midnight. I get the
same excitement staying up after my bedtime, that I used to as a kid when my
dad sometimes let me watch the ice-skating with him. The judges were eccentric
then too. They used to stand on the ice and hold up a mark in each hand. My dad
sometimes used to shout at them, even though his knowledge of ice-skating was
rudimentary.
    Frankly, it’s the Winter Olympics
that have made Andy’s rejection almost bearable.
    The only thing I can’t be doing with
is the curling. It’s just too similar to darts.
     
    * * *
     
    My mouse glides over:
    US Foreign Policy "absolutist
and simplistic"
    and:
    Pop Idol And then there were three!
    There are no new messages in my
Inbox.
     
    Click on COMPOSE.
     
    Dear Andy. In the circumstances, I
think it's only fair that I take over the quiz team. I have found a new
partner. L
     
    Fast work! But I think you should
talk about this. A
     
    My phone rings.
    ‘Lydia?’ says Andy.
    ‘Andy?’
    ‘About the quiz...’
    Deep breath.
    I go over what I’ve rehearsed with
Michelle for if he ever has the NERVE to call. I’m meant to put the phone down
now. But I can’t have rehearsed it enough. Anyway, he’d probably think I’d just
dropped the phone, which I sometimes do, and ring back.
    ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve already asked
someone else.’ A bit a little croaky at first, but gaining in confidence as I
go on.
    ‘Someone else?’ he says.
    He does actually sound a little sad,
and he’s not much of an actor (the Gazette’s words, not mine).
    ‘You can’t really expect to behave as
you have and still be in my team,’ I say more gently.
    ‘I thought it was our team.’
    Bloody hell! ‘So did I!’
    I put down the phone.
    I had the last word AND I put down
the phone.
    Michelle will be proud of me.
    Actually, I enjoyed it.
    I almost wish he’d ring again, so
that I can put it down again.
    I wonder if he will ring again?
    The phone rings.
    ‘Yes?’ Suitably abrupt and
unforgiving voice.
    ‘Am I speaking to Lydia?’
    ‘Kim, Goodness me, you work late,
Joanna is so lucky—’
    Alas my love...
    ‘Lucky! That’s about the last thing I
feel at the moment. Look, Vlad found a joint in Ingeborg’s room and sacked
her.’
    ‘The nice Dutch girl?’
    ‘If it were up to me, I’d turn a
blind eye, but you know how Vlad is about smoking.’
    ‘Was it the tobacco or the grass he
objected to?’
    ‘Didn’t taste like grass actually,
tasted like Moroccan Black. I think I was more interested in the nicotine.’
    ‘Joanna?’
    ‘I smoked it in the back garden when
Vlad was in Chicago. For God’s sake don’t tell, Lyd. I needed a giggle. I
wouldn’t have dared if it had been Europe, but with Chicago I thought even if
he calls this minute and tells me he’s on his way, I still have five hours.
I’ve been brushing my teeth almost constantly since, and everything had to go
to the dry-cleaner. You won’t tell, will you?’
    What I want to say is, Of course I
won’t tell, but if you fancied a giggle, why didn’t you invite me round? We
could have had a bottle of white wine, or a jug of Pimm’s, like we used to do
when you were at Oxford, sitting out on the flat roof below your window, our
giggles ringing out over the Broad, and people looking up, trying to see where
the laughter was coming from.
    What I say is, ‘So what do you want?’
    ‘Ever been to Legoland?’ says Joanna.
    I’m not usually keen on theme parks, but
it will be a way of spending some time with my sister, whom I suddenly feel
enormously fond of.
    ‘Bring Andy!’ she adds.
    ‘We’ve split up.’
    ‘Oh. Well, you know what they say
    ‘Yes, they go on about fish, which
doesn’t actually make sense metaphorically or literally, because there are not
shoals of unattached marriageable men out there, and, according to Radio 4, the
cod stocks are almost exhausted.’
    I think just by having it on in the
car you absorb a certain number of facts.
    I put the phone down on Joanna. Which
isn’t quite as pleasurable as with Andy, but serves her right for fish, even
though she didn’t in fact mention fish now I come to think of it.
    I ought to ring her back, but I’m
loath to get on the phone again in case Andy rings and I can put the phone down
on him