» William Tells
Will Harris takes his heart on an epic shopping spree
“Your credit card arrived then,” says my flatmate, hanging his coat behind the lounge door. “I regret nothing,” comes the reply from the pile of shopping bags currently taking up most of our sofa.
As, grunting, I extricate myself from beneath the rustling heap, store receipts flutter to the floor like ticker tape. “More check shirts, I see. And what’s this? Has Dame Vivienne come to stay?” “They were reduced,” I mutter, snatching the shoebox from his hands. “Besides, I’ve had enough of being tramped over. With these boots on my side, it’ll be me doing the tramping for once. Me!”
“Wow,” says my flatmate. “What’s wrong with you?” What’s wrong with me is, since finding myself unexpectedly single, I’ve also found myself unexpectedly solvent. OK, I’m no Jackie Onassis, but it’s surprising how much all the meals out and mini breaks add up to when you’re not footing the bill anymore. I could do something sensible with my windfall of course – save for a mortgage maybe, or send a hired gun down to my ex’s Contemporary Movement class (just a thought) – but instead I’ve chosen to wear my wealth on my sleeve. Where my heart used to be.
“I’ve had enough of being tramped over. With these boots on my side, it’ll be me doing the tramping!”
When a person leaves your life, it’s understandable they leave a gap. Some people fill that gap with alcohol, others with casual sex; I, apparently, have filled mine with enough check fabric to feed a Bay City Rollers convention for months. And so I ask the question: without someone to love, is everything else just filler?
I look over at where my flatmate is ladling a mountain of Chinese food onto his plate, eyes shining. Since his other half went away on tour last month, I’ve noticed his normally regimented diet slip from smoothies and tofu to Big Macs and bacon butties. By filling his face, is he really filling a deeper need?
“I don’t eat that much!” he gasps, when I ask. I point out the last time we went to GBK he ordered two burgers. “How many times! I didn’t have fries. I had one burger and then I had another burger instead of my fries.”
What about my friend H, who lives alone and often has to smoke one of her funny cigarettes of an evening just to stop the hours dragging? Is she not only filling her gap but trying to convince herself it doesn’t exist? And, if she succeeds, doesn’t she run the risk of smoking-out love from her life completely?
It strikes me there are some gaps that can’t be filled. Some gaps you can only cover temporarily, whether it’s with a haze of smoke, a napkin at the end of a big meal, or a lot of new clothes. And just like the emperor in the story, I don’t think my new clothes have anyone fooled about what’s underneath.
