This thing with Charlie? It had to end. I couldn’t go on like this. I just…
“Get a grip, Daniel,” I said to the face in the mirror. “Get a fucking grip.”
This thing with Charlie started on December 2, in the year when my now ex-wife went to Lithuania to get veneers and came back with a different personality instead.
She had strange new teeth as well, of course. Then she went back again a few weeks later to fix her nose. Huge bandages covering the face that I nursed and cleaned and tended to, soothing her when she was in pain, and checking her medication when her scars got infected and bled.
I didn’t fully understand why I became so resentful towards that thing on her face, because I’d loved her just the way she was. Her smaller size, her tiny waist and her slender frame. I’d loved her because she was Justine and I’d known her since forever. We’d gone through medical school together, graduated together, had a pregnancy scare together and gotten married because that was what people did when they had jobs and money and wanted to buy a house. That was what people did when they were in love.
We had done everything right.
Justine had always wanted to fix her nose. Her boobs. Her teeth. My teeth. My nose. My ridiculously thick chest hair, my paleness and my weird taste in jeans. I told her not to be so vain and self-obsessed. She sulked. We couldn’t afford it, yet suddenly we could. The teeth thing was first on the list, of course, to fix some imagined fault that I struggled to see. It became the most important thing, and I agreed because she was my wife and I wanted to give her the world.
The truth was, I hated her new look. She loved it. Her newfound confidence annoyed me. She annoyed me even more. I hated all her new clothes, the new underwear she ordered online and her new tanning routine. I hated the looks people gave her and the plunging necklines she suddenly wore, just to show herself off. I hated the new bright red lipsticks she bought. Yet, I loved her. Then she suddenly didn’t love me anymore. I didn’t blame her because I was truly being an arse. I was jealous and controlling and possessive and, frankly, weird. She was nothing like the girl I had married. And me? I was nothing like the boy she used to love.
The last text she sent me was a selfie of her with her blinding smile on display, sitting on a beach in Barbados, where her new boyfriend was enjoying her brand-new boobs smothered in the beach-ready fake tan she liked to use. That was after we sold the house, that we’d lived in less than a year, at a massive loss. That was after she left me and moved in with the new Junior Doctor in Paediatrics. That was after my life was smashed to splinters for the second time.
The first time was when Rita, my first wife, told me she wanted to leave because she’d met someone else. Someone who actually wanted a future, a marriage and a baby. Because, apparently, I wanted none of those things. She was right about that. I didn’t. Rita and I married on a whim because the hotel down the road was doing a “Wedding for a grand’’ promotion, and the thought of it, and the fact that we could afford the thousand pounds, had, at the time, made me giddy with excitement. She moved out of our shared apartment a week after our first wedding anniversary, which I celebrated on my own with a crate of beer and entertaining myself royally by downloading all the dating apps I could find on the App Store.
After Rita took half of our life and moved out of our flat, I nursed myself with alcohol and shagged my way around the local area, through students and nurses and care workers and random girls who would appear on my screen. I even shagged my friend Justine, who had let me cry on her shoulder... then I shagged Justine again.
Then… Then things had been wonderful, and Justine and I were happy. We had a good life, with friends and holidays in the sun and money to spend, before, suddenly, none of that mattered anymore.
I didn’t want to remember all those things that happened next—the arguing and the hopeless feeling of desperate sadness. I cried and drank most nights, apart from when I frantically applied for any job I could find. Something far away from London that I could get myself stuck into. I wanted something hectic with long shifts, where I could get lost in just being a doctor and forget about being me.
I’d never even heard of Chistleworth, but there was a job for a GP there at a small clinic that sold itself on its great location and experienced colleagues, and I was invited to visit. Three weeks later, me and my pathetic-looking suitcase walked into the lobby of The Chistleworth Nordic Star Hotel, the cool budget hotel for the “savvy business traveller”.
I was neither cool, savvy nor a business traveller, but here I was homeless and in need of a bed for the next couple of weeks while waiting for the small house I’d bought, without even viewing, to become available for me to move into. Chistleworth was far enough north that I could splash out on more than just a bedsit, but the truth was, the dilapidated two-bed wreck that I now owned, was the only house in town I could afford.
I was back to square one. Broke, single, and with nothing to show for my entire adult life, apart from the name badge that I would pin to my chest.
Daniel Gilbert, GP
That’s me. I’d been a doctor for years, working in busy practices all over London. I’d done stints in Emergency rooms, worked in hospital clinics, and even considered taking up a locum Consultant post at St Thomas’s… before Justine left me and put an end to that idea.
I didn’t want to think about Justine. I didn’t want to think at all. Instead, I spent my days living in a sterile hotel room that didn’t offer me any of the comfort and warmth the website had guaranteed. I was cold, depressed, antsy, and taking my bike on long excursions around the town, riding up and down the road of the building I’d bought to live in. A dull-looking terrace, with windows that needed a truckload of paint, and a front door that looked flimsy enough to kick right in.
I would need a builder, which was obvious. I would also need a bankruptcy deal and a straitjacket, after buying something I’d never seen. It had been a moment of madness, agreeing to all of this. Another well-aimed arrow in the sparring with Justine, trying to outmanoeuvre each other in our fake newfound happiness. She boasted about the superior qualities and traits of her new man. I retaliated with fake words of financial freedom and a future in the countryside. She laughed at me. I pitied her.
The fairytale I had made up in my head, was nothing like the existence I now suffered. Instead I wheeled my now-muddy bike through the glass doors at the Nordic Star Hotel, hoping the receptionist would once again let me store it in the baggage room. I was tired and fed up, the bike an obvious mistake, and I was trailing dirt behind me over the rustic wooden flooring. I couldn’t see the bubbly lady who I usually dealt with. Instead, there was a man sat behind the desk, his head bent over a book, scribbling something on a thick notepad. The Chistleworth Nordic Star Hotel didn’t believe in the traditional reception desk. Instead, pushing their concept of a Barception, where you were offered a drink with your key and could enjoy a nightly meal by the fireside rustic bar… ception.
I had brought all my meals to my room so far, enjoying the solitude of not having to be social with anyone, nor worry if I spilt ketchup on my shirt. I hadn’t worn a proper shirt for weeks, since resigning from my job in London. Hadn’t combed my hair either, by the looks of it, or bothered with deodorant. I had slobbed my way through the days, ignoring the festive decorations and invitations for Christmas drinks from friends back in London—friends that I would swiftly delete from my phone. That wasn’t my life anymore. They were Justine’s friends. Part of Justine’s life.