“I was in the way,” I say, shaking my head and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Am I drooling? I think I genuinely just drooled. Well done, Laura, Beethoven the slobbering Saint Bernard is a really sexy look.
I try to retrieve the stray tampons as quickly as I can. Of all the things that had to fly out of my bag, it had to be the tampons, didn’t it? The lounge must be on a slight slope, because the seemingly never-ending supply are now rolling down the aisle. I scurry around on my hands and knees, doing my best to fish the strays from beneath people’s feet as they carry on reading their newspapers, too British to acknowledge that sanitary products are being flagrantly bandied about in public.
“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter.
When I stand up again, I see the beautiful man standing with a fistful of tampons he has helped to retrieve.
“I think we got them all,” he says with a dimpled grin.
Hardly daring to look at him, I take them and stuff them straight into my handbag. My forehead feels damp with sweat, my cheeks burn. Clocking my embarrassment, he says quietly, “Don’t worry, I have sisters.”
I give him a pained thumbs-up, too mortified to form words as I hurry back to the desk with my bag, hiding my face behind my passport. All the cool, flirty body language I could have gone for, and I went for the thumbs-up.
* * *
* * *
On the plane, I’m next to an empty aisle seat. If life worked like it did in films, this would be the perfect opportunity for a meet-cute. I wonder if people ever really meet that way. Maybe I should do a special edition of How Did You Meet? and interview couples who all met on planes. As I’m thinking this, a burly man with a sweaty face and a Day-Glo-orange money belt stops at the end of the row, indicating he is the person I have won in the seat-buddy lottery.
“Cheer up, love,” he says, my face clearly betraying my profound disappointment with the seating plan. “It never hurts to smile.”
I clench my teeth. He has uttered an expression that I loathe with a vengeance, and over the last two years I have heard it more times than I can count. It is an intrinsically sexist comment—if a man were looking contemplative or perplexed, would another man instruct him to cheer up and smile? No, he bloody well would not.
Money Belt Man attempts to talk to me throughout the flight. He asks me where I’m staying in Jersey and keeps “accidentally” brushing my leg with his hand. I curl into the corner of my seat, plug in my earphones to listen to No Jacket Required, my favorite Phil Collins album, and bury my face in my book.
Tiger Woman is full of exactly the kind of meaningless empowerment metaphors I imagined it would be. The first chapter is all about “reclaiming your roar.” I quote:
Do tigers worry about the volume of their roar? Do they play the pussycat so as not to offend? They do not. The patriarchy forces us to turn down the volume, but we must roar, and roar loudly, if we want to be heard.
It’s the kind of language that makes me roll my eyes, but then I imagine turning to Money Belt Man and roaring at him to stop touching my leg, rather than cowering politely behind my headphones and a book. The thought brings a smile to my face.
All the optimism and excitement I felt as I packed my bag this morning has vanished, like air wheezing from a punctured tire. The news that Vanya will really be moving out has thrown me; I thought it might take her months, even years, to get organized with a mortgage. Everyone is moving on, growing up. Vee makes our flat a home; if a stranger moves in, it will just be a flat again. When I was twenty-five, I thought I would have achieved so much by the time I was almost thirty. But what have I got to show for the last four years? All that has changed is that the men who chat me up are now in their fifties and wear luminous money belts.
When we land, I dart off the plane as fast as I can, grab my black suitcase from the conveyor belt, jump into a taxi from the rank, and ask the driver to take me into town. All I want now is to be alone in my hotel, unpack, wash off the plane, and then order alcohol-based room service.
“Your first time in Jersey?” asks the cabdriver. He’s wearing a plaid flatcap and has a wild brown beard flecked with gray.
“Yeah,” I say quietly, all out of small talk. There should be some kind of code to politely convey to a cabbie that you’d rather not make conversation.
The driver’s beard is quite extraordinary, and I find myself staring at it. It’s nothing like a well-groomed hipster beard—more of a Tom Hanks in Castaway beard. This guy literally looks as if he washed up here a few years ago, has been sleeping in a hut, living off coconuts, and then today decided to start driving a cab. His car also smells distinctly castaway-like—there’s a definite musk of wet, sandy towels.
He surveys me in the rearview mirror, and I’m slow to muster a smile.
“Cheer up, love,” he says, in a soft, deep voice.
And that does it. Something inside me snaps, and before I can stop myself, I bite back.
“I am allowed to look grumpy if I want to. It is my face and my prerogative not to smile. You don’t know what’s going on in my life, and it is not my responsibility to make the world a prettier place for you, OK? So just keep your eyes on the road, please.”
His dark eyes grow wide in surprise, and he dutifully returns them to the tarmac ahead. I know I should stop talking, rein it in, but it’s like this bubble of rage has been sitting in my stomach for I don’t know how long—but now that I’ve popped the cork, out it spews.
“And you know, maybe I don’t want to look cheerful. Maybe I’ve got nothing to look cheerful about. Maybe I’m doing everything wrong and I’ll have ‘died with unrealistic expectations’ engraved on my bargain basement headstone.”
I sink back into the seat, having scared myself a bit. I’m not sure the author of Tiger Woman meant me to “unleash my inner roar” on a poor, unsuspecting stranger.
“You’re over from London then,” says the driver, shifting awkwardly in his seat.
Oh right, so now he thinks I’m some angry city cow. It’s not city living that has made me angry. I cross my arms and turn to glare out of the window at the evening sky. We’re driving along the seafront now, a huge expanse of dimpled, wet sand merging into a gray-blue sea. I try to catch my breath, taking a moment to absorb the sight.
The driver is watching the road, his shoulders relaxed, a finger tapping on the wheel, unflustered by my outburst. Obviously, I should apologize. I know I’ve overreacted and none of what I’m feeling is this cabdriver’s fault. But if I try to be nice, I think I might cry, and I really don’t want to cry on him—that would be even more awkward than him thinking me rude.
* * *
* * *
I’m booked into the Weighbridge, a hotel on a cobbled square in the center of St. Helier. It’s got a spa, several restaurants, and a beautiful view over the harbor. Ridhima, one of the assistants at work, got me a great deal as long as I hashtag the hotel in social media posts. At first glance, it seems the ideal central location from which to explore the rest of the island.