Faking It Read online

  Faking It

  Portia MacIntosh

  For my husband, Joe

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgments

  More from Portia MacIntosh

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  ‘I love a man in uniform,’ I tell the man standing in front of me

  Is it obvious, from that terrible clichéd line, that I’ve always been crap at flirting? Everyone is bad at it when they’re a teenager, trying to get the attention of whichever horrible teenage boy they have a crush on, only for him to break their hearts because he prefers his PlayStation and pretends he doesn’t care. But when you get into real adulthood, the power is supposed to shift. Men have to grind to get the attention of women. Flirting as a grown woman should be as simple as existing, surely?

  Unless, of course, you believe the old binary bullshit perpetuated by romcom movies that all women are either a Beyoncé or a Bridget Jones. A total goddess or completely hopeless. To be honest, I never really understood what was supposedly so unattractive about Bridget, to make her so solidly single for so long, which made me think the spinster trope was probably a figment of fiction too. But anyone looking at me now, attempting to flirt while this poor chap cringes in front of me, would almost certainly file me under: Bridget.

  ‘Erm, thanks,’ he says awkwardly. I’m surprised he doesn’t hear this more often – don’t all women love a fireman? – Then again, I suppose people don’t say it out loud, do they? They just buy the sexy calendar and hide it in a drawer.

  This clearly isn’t working. And it’s reminding me why I’m single. But to be honest, I hadn’t been all that worried about it until the events of today.

  I often wonder who decided that two’s company and three’s a crowd because, for some reason, they completely overlooked one. It’s not as though I need validation for my life choices, it just would have been nice to be included, that’s all.

  It’s not all bad, being a ‘one’. I get to decide what I want to do and when I want to do it. I – and I alone – always get to choose what’s for dinner, what I want to watch on TV, whether I want the radiator on full blast or the window wide open. I am my own person, free to do whatever I want, accountable to no one apart from yours truly…

  I grew up being told by everyone I knew, and every bit of media I consumed, that I had two options. I was supposed find myself a fella, asap, settle down, get married, have kids – you know the drill – or I could take the more modern, feminist-y route of shunning all of that in favour of being a ball-busting career woman who doesn’t need a man, or kids, who battles her way up the career ladder to smash the glass ceiling, and lives her best self-sufficient life.

  There’s a third route no one talks about though, and it’s not so much the route I have chosen, more the road I wandered down, and now I think I’m probably too far along to turn back.

  I know I’m not alone, as one of these third-routers, being in my thirties, unmarried, with no kids, not owning my own home, bouncing from job to job. There are plenty of us out there but many are too embarrassed to admit it. Well, of course they are; it’s the pitying looks that follow the prying questions. ‘Oh, has it not happened for you yet?’ – as though I’ve lived my every waking moment on this planet just searching for a man, any man, with enough sperm to keep me popping out babies on the regular, and for what? Sometimes people say, ‘But it’s your job, to keep the human race going.’ Well, guess what, I didn’t apply for that job (and I’d probably suck at that job as much as I do my actual job anyway).

  I just wish people would stop making women feel like failures for taking the third route. You never know a person’s personal circumstances. You don’t know why they don’t have kids, or why they haven’t met the right person yet. And, I promise you, the further you wander aimlessly down the third route, the harder it is to turn around.

  I’m just me, alone, with a low-paying job, a crippling rent-paying addiction, and no one or nothing to fall back on. And sometimes, when you are just you, alone, things can go wrong, and there’s no one around to have your back. That’s when you end up in big messes, like I am right now, with no option but to try and – as a last resort – flirt your way out of sticky situations.

  ‘I used to stay up late to watch London’s Burning when I was a kid, even though I was far too young,’ I say, because of course I do. What else am I going to do, when my flirtatious advances don’t work, other than double down?

  ‘Soldier, Soldier too – loved that,’ I continue, but double-doubling down doesn’t help my case either. ‘Did you watch that?’

  ‘I’m twenty-five,’ he tells me, without a flicker of emotion. I’m not even sure he knows what I’m talking about.

  Oh my God, this practical baby standing in front of me is nine years younger than me. It always blows my mind, when I meet people who are so much younger than I am, but seem so much more mature – like a real adult. I’m thirty-effing-four and I certainly don’t feel like one of those.

  ‘Sorry, when I asked you to tell me everything, I meant about your flat, not about your childhood,’ the fireman explains. I think he thinks I’m stupid – stupid is preferable to arsonist though, right?

  That’s another thing pop culture has misled me with – I thought women were supposed to be able to use their sexuality to get them out of any bind? But, nope, more bullshit.

  The fireman is tall, broad and handsome – exactly like the firemen in the calendars, but he’s the only one here who makes the cut. The rest of the team, all rushing around me, doing their jobs, are a mixture of older men, and a couple of women. I’m not fetishising this man’s job, I’m just saying, the calendar must be a really small sample from all over the country, rather than representative of firefighters everywhere.

  And now I see where I’m going wrong. You know how they say, that if you wind up in prison, you find the biggest person and you punch them in the face? Well, what I’ve done here is try to flirt with the hottest fireman – and failed. But give me a break, it must only be 6 a.m. – it’s not even light out yet.

  ‘Ohhhh,’ I say, as though I’ve just had some big epiphany. I cough to clear my lungs before I continue. The icy cold January air hurts my insides. ‘Right, yeah. Well, I guess it set on fire.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ever so slowly, as though he were talking to an idiot. ‘We’re up to speed on that part.’

  I rent an absolutely tiny flat above an Italian takeaway, run by a man called Antonio, whose cuisine is about as
Italian as he is (which is not at all, he’s Welsh, but he seems to think pretending to be Italian is good for business). Antonio is my landlord, and kind of a sleaze, so he’s always either ticking me off for something I’m doing wrong or flirting with me for something I suppose I’m doing right. The only thing my sexuality gets me is free pizza – and the only thing free pizza gets me is an arse that jiggles when I run – I imagine. I definitely don’t run. Even just now, from a burning building, I’d probably call it more of a jog.

  ‘Just talk me through what happened with the fire,’ he suggests. ‘Before, during and after.’

  Oh, God, where to begin?

  ‘Well, it was the smoke billowing… billowying? Billowing?’

  ‘Billowing,’ the fireman insists. He’s starting to get frustrated with me now. Looks like I’ve burned my bridges as well as my flat.

  ‘Right, billowing. It was the smoke billowing into my bedroom that woke me up, so I grabbed my phone, ran outside, called you…’

  ‘OK, so before you went to sleep?’

  ‘Before I went to sleep…’ I say slowly, stalling when I have one big realisation that gives this whole saga a new and horrifying spin.

  I went out with some work colleagues last night and things got a little messy. The night out was in honour of Greg, the new guy, to welcome him to the team. I’m a receptionist at a digital agency – not that I’m all that sure what they do, but it doesn’t matter too much to me, I just answer the phone. Not everyone likes to stay out late. But I do, and Greg clearly does, so when I finally called it a night at 3 a.m. he ran after me, asked if I lived locally and, when I said I did, he asked if he could crash on my sofa, because he had missed his last train home.

  At first, I thought this might have been a chat-up line but he really did just come back to my place and make himself at home on my sofa, which was perfect, because even I know you don’t sleep with the new guy on his first day. So, I left him there, sound asleep. I went to bed and then the next thing…

  ‘Just a quick question,’ I say, casually. ‘If someone had been, say, fast asleep on the living room sofa, while it was on fire, would you be able to tell?’

  The fireman’s eyebrows shoot up into his helmet.

  ‘If someone died in the fire would we be able to tell?’ he asks in disbelief. He doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘Yes, yes, we would be able to tell if someone died in the fire.’

  I try my hardest to mask my relief that Greg didn’t burn with the sofa, but I exhale so hard I probably blow away the last of the smoke. To be honest I’d forgotten about him, and, with my bedroom door being nearer the front door than the living room is, I just charged straight out as soon as I realised the place was on fire. Thank God he’d already left.

  ‘If someone was in there, do you think they could have started the fire before they left?’ he presses on.

  I wonder, only for a few seconds, what the new guy could possibly stand to gain from trying to burn my flat to the ground.

  I notice the fireman glance over my shoulder. I follow his gaze to a firewoman who has something blackened and smoky in her hands. I’m no expert but it looks like what used to be the waste-paper bin from my living room.

  ‘We’ve found what started the fire,’ the firewoman says. ‘Looks like a butt caused it.’

  I bite my finger, to try not to laugh at something that is undeniably funny, but it tastes like charcoal so I quickly remove it. I know this isn’t funny, this is awful, everything I had (even though it wasn’t much) was in that flat, but if you don’t laugh, you just cry and cry and cry. Thankfully most of my stuff was in the bedroom (like my clothes and my laptop).

  ‘Do you smoke?’ the fireman asks me.

  ‘I don’t, but the man who was sleeping on my sofa does… I did tell him, if he wanted to smoke, he needed to stick his head out of the skylight…’

  ‘Well, it looks like he’s discarded his cigarette end in your bin before he left,’ he says.

  ‘Figlio di puttana!’ a not-all-that-Italian accent interrupts us.

  Antonio appears from behind the fireman, seemingly popping up out of nowhere. He’s on the short side with hair so black it had to come out of a bottle. He’s obviously rushed over here but still found time to slick back his hair before he left the house. I swear, he must style himself exclusively on clichéd characters from mob movies, which is way off the mark for what he’s trying to achieve.

  ‘Antonio, buongiorno,’ I say cheerily, as though that’s going to get him onside.

  ‘Don’t you buongiorno me, Ella,’ he replies. He sticks a stereotypical ‘a’ sound on the end of several of his words, which, frankly, even I find offensive. ‘You set fire to my bloody flat?’

  ‘We think it might have been her house guest,’ the fireman tells him, helpfully, which is surprising given how unhelpful I’ve been to him.

  ‘And what did I bloody tell you about house guests?’ Antonio starts, getting angrier by the second. He’s definitely got the stereotypical fiery Italian temper down to a fine art. ‘After your last party, I tell you, no more house bloody guests, and here you are – burning my bloody business to the bloody ground.’

  ‘We were actually able to contain the fire to the living room. Ella raised the alarm almost immediately,’ the fireman tells him, but Antonio is having none of it.

  ‘I don’t give a damn, this one is nothing but trouble,’ Antonio replies.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to talk for a moment,’ the fireman says. I don’t blame him for removing himself from the situation. I know you have to be pretty brave to do this sort of job, but you’d have to have a death wish to be standing between me and Antonio right now.

  ‘Look, Antonio, I really am sorry,’ I say sincerely. ‘I had no idea. It was a friend from work who missed his last train. I was just trying to help him out. Obviously, I can’t pay you back for the damage straight away, but I can over time – I’ll even work shifts in the pizza place on an evening. Just… please don’t kick me out… I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Bella, bella, bella,’ Antonio says. He softens as he wraps an arm around me. Oh, God, he always calls me Bella, instead of Ella, when he’s about to say something sleazy.

  ‘I’m sure we can come up with some way for you to pay me back,’ he says as he begins to rub my shoulder.

  ‘Ergh,’ I can’t help but blurt as I shake him off me. ‘Forget it, I’d rather be homeless.’

  Antonio snaps back to angry mode.

  ‘Then pack up your shit and get out of my flat,’ he shouts.

  I sigh. I don’t really have much choice then, do I? You see, this is what you get for trying to do someone a favour. It literally blows up in your face. I saved Greg from a night on the street – or a ridiculously expensive taxi – and this is what happens. I wish I’d left him to fend for himself now.

  As soon as the fireman tells me it’s safe to go back inside, I head upstairs to gather my things.

  It’s funny, the place always had a smell that I really didn’t like, a sort of greasy kitchen smell that drifted up from the takeaway below. Now that the entire flat stinks of smoke it’s hard to remember why I hated the original smell so much.

  The living room isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I imagined a big black hole, with everything inside it burnt to a crisp. I must have raised the alarm pretty quickly because the damage is mostly concentrated around the sofa and the table. Thank God I did raise the alarm. Thank God I woke up. This is why I’m starting to think that maybe I do need someone to share my life with – if only to decrease my chances of dying in a fire.

  I make my way to the tiny, pea-green bathroom to gather up my things. I quickly wash my face and try to brush my teeth, except my toothbrush tastes like smoke, so it’s probably more hygienic to forgo brushing my teeth right now.

  I blast my long blonde hair with half a can of dry shampoo, drag a brush through the knots, and cake on some make-up before moving on to the bedroom. I sniff out my least stinky work outfi
t and, through a combination of spraying it with deodorant and whipping it against the bed, try to get the smell of smoke out. I am the most presentable – and the least smelly – I can humanly be right now. I’m also weirdly fortunate enough that all of my belongings fit into three bags for life – they’re big ones, at least, but it’s not much to show for thirty-four years on this earth, is it?

  Back outside the fireman takes my details, in case they have any more questions for me. I think he feels a bit sorry for me now. He gives my shoulder a squeeze as he reassures me that it wasn’t my fault, and that Antonio’s insurance should see him right, but I still feel bad.

  ‘Antonio,’ I call out cautiously as I head towards him outside the takeaway, which he’s opened up for firefighters to go inside and check.

  ‘Ella, if you are even thinking about asking me for your deposit back, no, forget about it, piss off,’ he rants in an accent that would make Super Mario proud.

  I just nod thoughtfully for a second before heading for my car. I load my bags into the back, sit in the driver’s seat and cross everything I have that it will start today. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. My car, like my life, is riddled with problems. The battery runs flat for almost no reason, and it’s leaking some kind of liquid.

  ‘Come on,’ I say as I go to turn the key. It makes a sound as if it’s in physical pain every time I try to start it. I’ll just have to get the bus to work – at least I can store my stuff in my car.