The List

by Joanna Bolouri

Genres: Women's Fiction; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

One year. One woman. Ten very naughty challenges. Phoebe Henderson may be single but she sure doesn't feel fabulous. It's been a year since she found her boyfriend in bed with another woman, so faced with a new year, Phoebe concocts a different kind of resolution. The List: ten things she's always wanted to do in bed but has never had the chance (or the courage!) to try. A bucket list for between the sheets. One year of pleasure, no strings attached.

Release date: December 5, 2013

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

Saturday January 1st

I emerged from my bed like Nosferatu about an hour ago with a mouth like a stable floor. Since the minibar has been cleaned out and I cannot find one cup in this entire hotel room, I’ve been forced to drink water directly from the bathroom tap. Fuck, I’m so hungover my face feels like it belongs to someone else. Lucy is still asleep on the other bed and I refuse to get dressed and venture out where there are people with eyes who will judge me.

For once the hangover was worth it, as last night’s party was amazing! Every year we all stay at the Sapphire Hotel (overpriced, trendy and slap bang in the middle of the city centre) to bring in the bells and every year I’m surprised they haven’t banned us yet. The others had already checked in by the time Lucy and I arrived at half past three. We took the lift to our floor, dragging our needlessly large suitcases behind us as we searched for room 413. I’ve worked with Lucy for two years and she’s never on time for anything. ‘I bet the others are pissed already,’ said Lucy, ‘and shagging. I bet they’re all covered in Moët and wearing each other’s underwear.’

Finally, we found our room and I fumbled with the key card in the door, ‘Jesus, is that all you ever think about? Anyway, we’re only half an hour late. Hazel’s most likely pricing the minibar, Kevin will be ready for a pint and Oliver’s probably …’

‘Getting head off that Spanish girl,’ Lucy interrupted. ‘What’s her name again?’

‘Pedra. I’ve only met her once and called her Pedro by accident.’

She threw her coat on the bed near the window and turned on the television as I started to unpack, wondering why the hell I’d brought four pairs of shoes.

‘Are you wearing your green dress?’ I asked, looking at the plain black one I’d brought.

‘Yup. Although with my red hair, I look like a Riverdance reject.’

I left her, mid-Irish jig, and went for a shower, excited about the evening ahead and thinking about last year’s party: when Lucy got so drunk she fell asleep in the lift and Oliver hid behind my bedroom door and scared me so badly I wet myself.

My train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door and a familiar Dublin accent.

‘Phoebe, I’m coming in. Put your cock away.’

I grabbed the towel and wrapped it around me just as Oliver appeared from behind the door.

‘Fuckssake, Oliver!’ I shrieked, turning away from him. ‘Give a girl some privacy! Go and peek at Pedro’s tits.’

‘It’s Pedra, and I’m not here to see your tits, impressive as they are. I’m here to tell you that dinner is at 7 p.m., and there was something else but Lucy’s Irish dancing has distracted me and made me homesick for mental redheads.’

‘Fine, I’ll see you when I’m dressed. Go and annoy someone else.’

An hour and two glasses of wine later, Lucy and I were still getting ready. The plan, every year, was to try to stay relatively sober until midnight, but generally we’d all be hammered by the time the bells chimed for New Year and do shots until we all fell over. I knew this year would be no different. ‘At least you don’t have Alex with you,’ said Lucy, pulling on her tights. ‘That man bored the shit out of everyone last year, going on about his bloody job. He’s a physiotherapist, not a fucking wizard.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, sleeping with his boss all that time, and he had the cheek to bring her into the conversation—’

‘Enough!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t kill my buzz talking about that dickhead. It’s over now. I just need to concentrate on finding someone who isn’t a total prick.’

‘Don’t set the bar too high,’ Lucy laughed. ‘And besides, it’s not a new boyfriend you need, Phoebe, it’s a shag! Sex makes everything better.’

‘My sex life is fine, thank you very much. What I need is another drink.’

We met Hazel and Kevin at the bar before dinner. They had already thrown half a bottle of champagne down their necks. Hazel saw me eyeing up the bottle.

‘We have no child for the night. I intend to get shit-faced.’

‘Hey, I’m not judging. I celebrate the fact I have no child every night,’ I replied.

Hazel looked amazing in her pastel-pink evening dress. She’d swept her blonde hair up into a high ponytail decorated with tiny diamantés. Her husband Kevin was in his kilt and looked very handsome. They always looked so effortlessly groomed that I felt a tad thrown together in my black wrap-over dress, red heels and the same hairstyle I’d had since 1995.

‘Oliver and Pedra not down yet?’

‘From the way those two were slobbering over each other in the lobby, I’d be surprised if they’ve left the bedroom.’ Kevin laughed and then paused, obviously trying to picture this in his head.

A flustered-looking waiter ushered us into the main hall, where we all sat around beautifully decorated tables covered in white linen with green and red centrepieces. There must have been around a hundred tartan-clad guests and the atmosphere was electric. There were tables of hipsters wearing jaunty hats, ready to Instagram photos of their meal as soon as it arrived, the obligatory table of young lads who were pissed before the meal even arrived and the occasional middle-aged couple who weren’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing. The meal itself was traditional Scottish: steak pie, haggis and some sort of tofu extravaganza for the vegetarians.

‘That cutlery is immense,’ said Lucy, lifting a silver spoon up to her face. ‘I’d like these in my house.’

‘Steal it then,’ I joked, but then I saw the look on her face.

‘Hey, klepto! Do not steal it. They made you pay for that dressing gown last year, remember?’

‘Yeah, but they don’t allocate cutlery to room numbers. That was a schoolboy error on my part.’

Ten minutes later Oliver swaggered in with a cheeky grin on his face, followed by Pedra, a woman so beautiful I wanted to punch her in the face and then myself. ‘Finally! Did you two get lost?’ I asked, knowing full well that wasn’t the case.

‘No,’ Pedra answered quite seriously.

‘I’m starving,’ Oliver announced, stealing the bread roll Lucy was buttering. ‘When’s the food?’

‘You better replace that with something carby in five seconds, Webb, or I won’t be responsible for my actions,’ she growled.

‘You never are,’ Oliver smirked, dropping another roll on to her plate. ‘A toast, please!’ He raised his glass and we all followed. ‘To my good friends: Hazel and Kevin, who completely ruin my theory that all marriages are a sham; Lucy, the kind of woman my mother warned me about; Phoebe, my oldest and funniest friend; and finally to my lovely girlfriend, Pedra; I apologize in advance – this will get messy … oh, and not forgetting the new friends we will make and quickly lose this evening by being terrible human beings. Let’s fucking do this.’

We ate, we laughed, we danced, by midnight my shoes were lying under a table, I’d been outside for 17,000 cigarettes and I was starting to get the ‘I’m going to be alone forever’ New Year’s blues when the slower songs came on. Thankfully Hazel spotted this and was able to pull me back off the ledge.

‘You thinking about Alex?’

‘Yeah. I think I still miss him.’

‘Nah, you miss the idea of him. The man you thought he was.’

‘The man I hoped he’d be.’

‘Exactly!’

‘He was charming in the beginning.’

‘So was Ted Bundy,’ she quipped.

‘I always thought Bundy would be a good name for a dog.’

‘Focus, Phoebe.’

‘Ugh, look, maybe I didn’t try hard enough either. He did have moments when he was quite loving and tender. Maybe I—’

‘Maybe you didn’t, Phoebe, who knows, but you didn’t screw around and he did! Alex was cheating on you for four months. That’s four months’ worth of lies for you and his mistress! That’s not an endearing quality in any man.’

I knocked back my tequila. ‘Why do I always gravitate towards arseholes? I’ll never find anyone good.’

‘You’ll find someone new. Perhaps you need to go for someone who isn’t your normal type.’

‘Like a woman?’

‘No. I mean someone you’d never usually consider, but, most importantly, someone who deserves you.’

‘YES!’ I shouted, startling a nearby man in an ill-fitting kilt. ‘This year I’m going to find someone. Someone different. Someone brilliant!’

‘You can do whatever you want. This is going to be your year, girl. Start living it. Now come and dance before we all turn into pumpkins.’

And so here I am, the first day of my brand-new year, and all I have to show for it so far is a hangover, a new spot on my chin and a handbag full of Lucy’s stolen cutlery. I’m going back to bed.

Sunday January 2nd

Today I have decided to make my New Year’s resolutions and become a better, more useful person instantly. But instead of the usual – lose weight, make money, unfollow everyone on Twitter who uses bastarding chat acronyms – I’ve decided to ask myself one question: if I could do last year again, what would I do differently? Every year I make the same lame resolutions, yet nothing really changes, and I end up wondering why I bothered. So, this year, the plan is to choose just one thing and actually get off my arse and do something about it. The question is, what? I’ve been brooding over where it went wrong with Alex, but the more I think about it the more I realize it was never right in the first place, even before he pissed off with Miss Tits. (I should really grow up and call her Susan, but that doesn’t quite convey the level of my disdain). The first night we met, I was so grateful that this tall, handsome man had shown interest in me I bought every round of drinks and thrust my phone number into his hand at the end of the evening. I didn’t hear from him again until two agonizing weeks later. I realize now that even that was significant. He kept me at arm’s length for our entire relationship, occasionally pulling me in to give me a glimpse of what a funny, sensitive person he could be, but only when he chose to. So while I wanted to be swept off my feet, in reality I was just tripped up occasionally. That bastard has a PhD in manipulation, and I swear if you looked up ‘fucker’ in the dictionary, there would be a photo of him, holding my heart, and possibly my severed head, looking victorious and doing a little jig. I could never quite live up to his expectations … I wasn’t educated enough or groomed enough or impressive enough. I just wasn’t enough. I wasted four years with someone who was completely underwhelmed to be with me. That’s the real kick in the vag. What a waste of time.

I spent over five hundred pounds on therapy in the last year with a forty-something-year-old American therapist called Pam Potter, whose name makes her sound like a garden gnome, but who happily listens to me bitch and whine in exchange for fifty pounds an hour (she was marginally cheaper than the psychologists with real names) and then says, ‘I hear what you’re saying, Phoebe.’ The fact she had two working ears leads me to believe this was true, but not entirely helpful. However, it did help me come to the conclusions that a) I am still angry about the whole Alex thing, and b) although I wasn’t completely blameless in our relationship, I did deserve better. No, I do deserve better. This year, I have to get Alex out of my system once and for all.

Monday January 3rd

It was Pam Potter’s idea that I keep a diary. Apparently this whole ‘writing down my feelings’ lark should be therapeutic, but it just feels weird.

I haven’t kept a diary since I was a fifteen-year-old loner with an ear cuff and a mono-brow. Back then my diary was hidden under my mattress and contained 13,000 different swear words to describe my parents along with some angstridden poetry about a boy in my class who never spoke and wore eyeliner. As it is, I still fancy boys who wear eyeliner, but I’m less inclined to insult my parents these days, except for when they send me those organic chocolates I hate at Christmas.

Despite it being a holiday, I had my first monthly session of the year with Pam this evening. She’d dyed her hair brown over Christmas and looked remarkably like Tina Fey.

‘How was the New Year for you? In our last session you mentioned you were still struggling with your break-up. Has that changed?’

‘God, no. I feel as if all I do is think about him … or moan about him … or just miss him. Recently I am seeing things more clearly, though.’

‘In what way?’

‘I threw myself into that relationship head first. I’ll be the first to admit that I was lonely, and when he showed interest in me I clung on to him. I might have been needy, but he was worse – he was lazy. He was too lazy to end it so instead he just kept me there until someone better could replace me. He couldn’t even be bothered to have his affair somewhere private. I remember when I caught them in our bed. OUR FUCKING BED!’

Pam just nodded, but I’m certain that if she wasn’t being paid to sit through this story for the millionth time she’d have happily drop-kicked me out the office window.

I could feel myself shaking as I visualized the moment I caught Alex. I’d arrived home early from a concert that had been cancelled at the last minute. I came in and threw my jacket on the couch and watched it fall on top of a bra I didn’t own. It was bright pink and about three cup sizes bigger than mine. The moaning from the bedroom gave me the answer to a question I hadn’t even had time to ask myself. ‘I walked into the room and stood there like an idiot. I couldn’t even speak. He just shrugged and said, “This was bound to happen. You knew things weren’t right between us.” I stayed with Hazel until I found my own place. She’s been very supportive. All my friends have.’

‘Good. That’s important. But it’s been almost a year, Phoebe. How do you feel you can move on from here? You’ve expressed the desire to on several occasions.’

‘I’ve been thinking about New Year resolutions. I need to change the way I think, otherwise I’m going to be stuck in this cycle forever. I’m going to change. I’m just not sure how yet.’

After my session with Pam, I called Oliver to tell him my plans. I could practically hear him rolling his eyes at me.

‘You don’t need to make a list of stupid resolutions you’ll never keep, Phoebe. Remember last year you were going to start running?’

‘I did start running. I totally ran. And anyway, I’m just making one resolution this year, one that matters.’

‘You ran once round the park and then you vomited in a hedge, Phoebe. That doesn’t count. You need to stop being so uptight and planning things. You never used to be like this. You used to be fun and carefree! We used to get pissed and you’d tell me all your secrets and we’d dance to really shit pop music at 5 a.m. Now you’re like the anti-Phoebe.’

So much for the support of my friends. ‘I got a little lost,’ I said quietly. ‘You know it’s taken me a while to get back on track after I split with Alex.’

‘I know that, but I suggest it’s time you start getting found. And laid. You need to get your groove back.’

‘Jesus, you sound just like Lucy. You two are obsessed.’

‘You sound repressed.’

‘I’m going now. Save your sex advice for Pedro. I have plans to make. Talk later.’

Trust him to piss all over my chips. He knows nothing.

Tuesday January 4th

Back at work today after my New Year break and I immediately wanted to set myself on fire. I’ve been working at this newspaper for three years, and approximately three weeks have been enjoyable. After running screaming from high school at seventeen, advertising sales was pretty much the only job for which my supposedly winning personality was more important than my qualifications. This was just as well, as I scraped a C pass in English and a Masters in forgery after faking my mother’s handwriting on sick notes throughout my final year. I’m surprised they didn’t have some sort of fun run to raise money for my recovery. The trouble with my job is that I’m meant to be good with people. Charming, even. Be interested in what they have to say and make them trust me, nay, LOVE ME to the point that they name their first child after me and then leave the kid out of their will because they love me more. But in fact I’m rubbish at small talk, I hate it, and if someone doesn’t want to take advertising space that’s fine with me; I honestly couldn’t care less. That last statement perfectly sums up my attitude towards my job: I couldn’t care less. But I do my best to talk a good enough game and sell my soul on a daily basis because I need to pay the rent. We share office space with ten other companies, most of which are in the financial sector, so I often have to share the lift with ball-bags who wear ridiculous ties and talk about numbers and golf. On the upside, the location is brilliant: a two-minute walk from the train station and upstairs from a pub and a sandwich shop where I’m found most mornings buying coffee and toast. The sales floor is mostly open-plan, and my desk is unfortunately directly in front of my boss Frank’s office, giving him a perfect view of what I’m doing all day (which is usually nothing). Most of the other staff have pictures of their family on their desks, but my ‘unkempt shambles that I call a workspace’ (Frank’s words) is decorated with a picture of a cat with a watermelon on its head, mostly obscured by empty coffee cups and aspirin packets. Today’s regular morning meeting was painless enough – lots of encouragement from said boss, who is the most horrendous blowhard to have ever walked the earth, which no one paid any attention to. Then I caught up on four hundred emails that had arrived over Christmas and the skeleton staff had ignored. Lucy arrived late as usual, stuffing her face with a breakfast bagel and swigging coffee from her glittery flask. ‘You all right, my lovely?’ she shouted over. ‘Recovered yet?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine; you want to have dinner tonight? Sushi?’

‘I can’t. I already have plans.’

‘New fella?’

‘Old fella. That guy I was seeing last year, the one with that yappy dog I hated.’

‘You said you’d never date anyone with dogs again. What changed?’

‘His dog died.’

I am 43% 97% sure that Lucy had nothing to do with that dog’s demise. Lucy, like Oliver, is a serial dater. When I first started at The Post she was dating two men at the same time and this seemed perfectly acceptable to her. She’s like the Pied Piper with men, they follow her wherever she goes and she has no intentions of becoming tied down any time soon.

‘The dating part is the fun part. After you start all that living-together nonsense it becomes a drag, so I prefer to keep things simple. I love the “getting to know you” part.’

I, on the other hand, have never been very good at dating, and the ‘getting to know you’ part scares the shit out of me. I’ve had five dates in my entire life, and all of them ended up in some sort of relationship. There was Chris – my first boyfriend at school, which lasted precisely six months, until he went to university in Manchester; Adam with the exceptionally large penis, whom I dated for five months before he decided he’d rather piss off and join the air force than be stuck in Glasgow with me; Joseph, who only lasted three months as he had issues with intimacy and being shite in bed; James, whom I dated for a year, but who was profoundly annoying and had a crippling phobia of baked beans; and finally Alex, who turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. Even though it’s been nearly a year since we split, the thought of having to find someone new continues to be frightening and I don’t see me rushing out to meet anyone anytime soon.

Thursday January 6th

Alex has been on my mind a lot today, but I’ve had her in my head too, with her bouncing curls and bouncing tits, held up by her giant pink bra. I imagine it’s never easy when you find out someone has cheated on you, but when you actually catch them shagging in your bed, it’s a tough image to erase from your mind. I could never figure out what he saw in her, but as always, Lucy’s on hand to offer some insight:

‘I’ll tell you what he saw in her!’ she bellowed down the phone. ‘He saw his bloody mother. It’s his Oedipus complex. His father’s dead, isn’t he? Says it all.’

‘His father’s very much alive, but excellent theory. Anyway, how was your dog-free date?’

‘Horrible. He talked about the dog, showed me pictures of the dog, and as his life is so empty he’s thinking of getting hamsters. What is he – an eight-year-old girl? I’ll be fucked if I’m dating a grown man who keeps rodents. Right, I must dash, but please try not to dwell on Alex too much. You’ll drive yourself mad.’

Three hours later and I’m still dwelling. I have so many unanswered questions, which I know I’ll never get answers to. Even if I confronted Alex, I doubt I’d be happy with, or even believe, a word that came out of his mouth. I still have feelings for him – that much is clear. I just don’t know whether it’s love or a need for closure. I think Oliver is wrong; I shouldn’t be trying to find ‘the old Phoebe’. Even I don’t recognize the old me any more. Perhaps Oliver still sees me as that seventeen-year-old who used to smoke grass in his bedroom and sneak into clubs with him at weekends. But I haven’t been that girl for a long time. I think instead I should be embracing the arrival of a ‘new Phoebe’. One who is successful and liberated and brave and who doesn’t refer to herself in the third person. Oliver texted me on his way home from work.

Tomorrow night: me, you, Jack Daniels and the Human League.

He’s either trying to cheer me up or he’s dumped his girlfriend.

Friday January 7th

Kelly, who works on the health-and-beauty section, is a strange fish. No one (except Frank, I guess) has any idea how old she is. She dresses like a woman in her twenties, but has the leathery face of someone twice that age who’s also spent the past twenty years asleep in a sunbed. She can be difficult to work with as she doesn’t bother hiding her contempt for the rest of us, choosing instead to express it through scowling, tantrums and passive-aggressive cuntery. This morning was no different.

‘If you’re going to borrow my pen, Brian, I’d appreciate it if you put it back exactly where you found it. How am I supposed to write down information when you’ve taken my fucking pen?’

Kelly hates Brian, and Brian feels the same about her. He works on the recruitment section and although he’s good at his job, he’s a mouthy, arrogant little shitbag, known throughout the office for his sexist views and love of large-breasted women. We seem to get on well enough, but I assume that’s partly because I have big tits. Brian looked at the nondescript biro in his hand. ‘You could buy another pen and then you’d have a spare. I’m sure these babies come in packs of ten.’

‘Not the point. The point is, keep your hands off my shit and get your own pen. Now, give me that one back.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he laughed.

‘Of course I am. Give me it back.’

He stood up, shaking his head. Then he got up, put the pen up his left nostril and left it hanging there as he approached Kelly’s desk.

‘I’m sorry I took your important pen, Kelly. Here. Take it.’

‘What a disgusting child you are!’ she exclaimed, and promptly slapped the pen out of his nose and on to the floor. I was still laughing as she stormed past my desk straight into Frank’s office. Shrugging, Brian picked up the pen and put it back on her desk. These people are not normal.

Oliver arrived a little after seven this evening with a huge holdall and a bottle of bourbon.

‘Moving in?’ I enquired, closing the door behind him.

‘No, I’m off to Edinburgh for work tomorrow afternoon, didn’t want to leave this in the car. I’m kipping on your couch tonight though. I intend to get wasted.’

He handed me the bottle and produced a Best of the 80s CD from his bag. ‘You pour, I’ll stick this on. If you’re not dancing by track six, we can no longer be friends.’

By track five (‘Kids in America’) I was pouring my second drink and shuffling on the kitchen tiles in my pink bedsocks. By the end of the CD we were both hammered and deep in conversation.

‘You’re like my brother.’

‘What the fuck? Don’t say that! That’s just weird.’

‘No, I mean, you’re like my family. You’re more than just my mate.’

‘Yeah, but your brother? You can’t fancy your brother.’

‘What? I don’t fancy you! You think everyone fancies you.’

‘That’s because they do. I’m awesome.’

‘No, I’m awesome. You’re just handsome.’

‘You are awesome and also handsome, Miss Henderson.’

‘Am I? Do you fancy me?’

‘Nope.’

‘Ha ha, fuck off.’

By 5 a.m. I’d gone to bed leaving awesome Oliver asleep on the couch. Maybe I do fancy him a teeny bit, but I’m not telling him that.

Saturday January 8th

I didn’t surface until four this afternoon, and Oliver had already left for Edinburgh. I thought about doing something productive, but decided that watching Dexter and eating teacakes was a far better way to waste an entire day. It’s now 11 p.m., I’m wide awake and I’m horny. Stupidly so. Hangover horns are brutal. I’m also still thinking about stupid bloody Alex and ways to get him out of my system. Maybe Oliver and Lucy have a point? I haven’t had sex since we broke up, and now I’m turning into some raging hormone who tweets her desires because she has no one to pounce on. When I think about it, my sex life has always been a bit hit and miss. People go on and bloody on about how fantastic sex is, and although I’ve enjoyed it, it’s like watching the second Matrix film – parts of it were good, but it didn’t exactly blow me away. But I’ve never had sex just for me; it’s always been about the other person. Maybe it’s time to start taking care of me for once. If I focus on me, I won’t have time to think about that dickhead, will I? Maybe the best way to get over him is to get over my hang-ups. The old Phoebe, the one that loves Alex, is a timid, sexually inhibited doormat. If I get rid of her, there won’t be any need for him. That’s it! That’s what I’m going to change, what I’m going to do differently this year. That’s going to be my one resolution: I’m going to improve my sex life!

There are loads of things I’ve always wanted to try – I’m going to take matters into my own hands and find out what all the fuss is about.

Wednesday January 12th

My flat really needs some sort of makeover, but I have neither the funds nor the motivation to do anything about it. It’s a tiny one-bedroom shoebox, approximately one-eighth of the flat I shared with Alex. It has an open-plan kitchen/living room, which means everything I cook makes the entire flat smell for days, and walls made from tracing paper. I can hear the old lady upstairs coughing at night, so God knows what she’s heard me doing. There’s a small garden at the front where flowers go to die, and if I ever manage to move, I’ll be throwing a lit match behind me as I go.

Lucy came over after dinner tonight and promptly threw herself down on the couch face first.

‘Evening, Lucy. Um … why are you wearing cropped trousers in January? Has winter not arrived on your planet yet?’

‘Style knows no seasonal restraints,’ she said, her voice muffled by the faded blue cushions on my couch. ‘I’ve come to reclaim what is rightfully mine. Give me back my straighteners.’

‘They’re in my room. Feeling rough?’

There was a groaning sound, followed by another unidentified one which could have been a fart. ‘Ugh. Your neighbours were all hanging . . .