Unlucky In Love
My girlfriend's name was Bethany. I like the name Bethany. It strikes me as a lithe and gothic name. In a good way, though. Probably because the first Bethany I think I ever met, on a friend's results day, was a lithe and gothic person. Well. They seemed like a recovering Goth, at least. Dark eyeliner, attractively unattractive clothes. My Bethany, on the other hand, was indeed quite sprightly, but quite the opposite of gothic. With a shock of bright blond hair, verging on platinum, Bethany was designed by Germans for the summer. Even in the winter she looked like she should be wearing a bikini under that thick, sheepskin coat.
Well, Bethany and I were in love. We'd been together a eight months before we split up. In that time there had been no arguments, very little bad air. We spent so much time together, everyone assumed that whenever Bethany cried or I was in a bad mood it was the other's fault. But it wasn't. Quite the reverse. Bethany was a luminescent figure in my often dark, damp word. She told me I was the same. When me and Bethany broke up, it was amicable, and we stayed close friends.
I had a nickname for Bethany. She was my Bête Noire. She was my little black cat. A ray of black light, she was my unlucky charm.
I met her on a rare trip to the bookies. A friend of mine, now a certified gambling addict, was betting on football matches. She, apparently, saw me from outside, and was drawn to me. At the time I was dumbfounded that such a stunning girl would wander in off the street to stand next to me. Now it seems obvious. When she was outside, Michael Owen was in the eighteen yard box, with only the keeper to beat. My ticket was worth £18. The moment she stepped through the threshold of that Ladbrokes our plucky striker had skied the ball, and I was £4 in the hole.
But despite the bad sentiment that this engendered, I saw through it, saw her through it, and fell in love with her straight away. Something in her eyes connected with me. She introduced herself and I smiled in acknowledgement. Bethany and I swapped phone numbers before the ball had even been reset, and by half time we'd arranged our first and second dates. I walked her home, at 5pm, and we were to meet up again, at the cinema, at 7pm.
I missed my bus. Well, I say missed. I was standing by the bus stop, but the driver just didn't seem to see me. When I arrived, the movie I wanted to see - so special was it to me, I'd been waiting until I met someone like Bethany before I even contemplated seeing it - had started twenty minutes ago. Bethany said it was OK, and we watched a romantic comedy that I would have almost certainly hated, had I seen it with anyone except Bethany. Instead, me and she, we mocked the clichés and held hands and stole kisses all the way through the movie. Five minutes before the end, as it was reaching it's loving climax, I chased her out.
The nickname came after the next encounter. Me and Beth (as she had insisted on being called after our first date), on our second time of meeting, went to a gallery, then for a meal. It was only the Custard Factory gallery, which is quite small. She's the artist of the two of us. I prefer algebra. And occasionally integration by parts, but only if I'm in a good mood. I let her wander around the gallery, watched her as she cooed over photographs, falling more in love with each utterance. Then we went to a restaurant, just around the corner. It came to the bill and this one was on me. I put my card on the bill tray, only to be told they didn't accept Switch. Or Visa. Or Solo. Well, obviously not Solo, but still. So I said I'd walk the half mile to a cash point. Just as I stood up, we all heard a crack of lightning. Then rain started knocking on the window as if we'd locked it outside by mistake. I smiled down at Beth. Aren't you just my little black cat, I said. My Bête Noire. She laughed.
I arrived back soaking wet from head to toe. As I walked through the door, she's laughing as though she hadn't stopped since I left. If I didn't love you so much, I told her, I'd be downright scared of you. The name Bête (supposedly pronounced 'Beyt', often mispronounced 'Bet') just stuck from there.
This set the template for our entire relationship. Every time we went anywhere, something bad would happen. Whenever I was in the vicinity of Bête, my pocket-sized blond canister of fizz, it managed to rain on my side of the taxi. I had to arrange important things around her. If I had a job interview, we wouldn't see each other for a few days. If I had to be on time for something, I didn't see her before it. It was like a contraceptive around us, and no matter what we, the plucky reproductive cells, did something found a way to go wrong.
Yet I was amazingly happy with Bête. We had a level of understanding and intimacy that everyone around me seemed to bemoan didn't exist. We shared jokes. We didn't keep secrets. Whenever I was around her, I didn't want to be parted from her.
It was the summer of 2002, and I was sitting at the bottom of my stairs. Bête walks in, and sits beside me. What are you doing, she asks. Waiting for my exam results, I say. At this point the two things don't even register. Bête next to me, my exam results in the postman's hand. They land on the mat. It clicks. We look at each other. The panic in my heart is overwhelming. She, her thin fingers with their light pink nails trembling slightly, picks up the envelope. Sitting beside me again, she begins to open it.
Even in doing this. Even, in all certainty while ruining my future, wasting at least three years of academia, she is beautiful. The dichotomy of her, sitting in front of me, appealing to, dangling from, every heart string I possess, and the letter she is about to read, threatens to tear me in half.
She begins. "Dear Mr Neilstrom, unfortunately-"
I stand up, the calm in my movements and features terrifying her. I kiss her on the forehead, and walk out the door. After a few minutes, she comes to find me. I'm sitting on the curb outside my house, weeping openly into my hands. I will have to retake at least one module next year. I have little enough money as it is, and I can ill-afford to take any more time out of getting a job to redo a whole subject. She sits beside me. As she does a boy on a bike rides past and throws his empty carton of Ribena behind him.
Needless to say, it hits me. Shall we call it a day, she asks, her voice too, openly stoic. I breathe in. I think we should, babe. The 'I love you's that are normally exchanged aren't necessary. It's all to obvious. It's all too heartbreaking.
Yeah, sure, we stayed friends, but I didn't see much of Bête for the next few months. We weren't going out any more, but I still loved her. Things started to go right for me. I won a few times on the old scratchcards. My university wrote to me and said there was an administrative error and I'd got a first. Bête and I laughed weakly about this. A girl I'd fallen in love with back at college, but who was far too good for me, turned up in my life again. She phoned me one night in November. She was a model now. Her name was Lucy. She'd got my number off a mutual friend.
I said I'd call her back.
I sat contemplating the last few months of my life without Bête. I had my hands down the back of the sofa, and felt something papery. It was a lottery ticket. My mother bought them weekly, and had said she'd lost hers for this week. Funnily enough the lottery was on TV at the time. I put it beside me idly and reached for my phone. I dialled out Bête's number. She answered, as happy to hear from me as I was to hear her voice. We talked for about ten minutes, general chit chat. The numbers started to roll.
I'm wondering, Bethany, I said. Forty-two. Hmm, she responded, without that fake disinterest that girls usually used on me at this point. Twenty-nine. I looked at the lottery ticket. Six, eighteen, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-three, forty-two. I swallowed hard.
- I'm wondering, Bethany, if perhaps we weren't a bit quick to end things the last time.
Thirty-three,
- But you remember what it was like, don't you.
six,
- Yes. I remember. I was the happiest person I'd even known me to be. I was in love with the most beautiful, perfect girl I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, and what's more, she loved me enough to put up with me.
thirty-two,
- So, you want us to get back together?
eighteen. Fireworks go off in the studio. We have a winner!
In about fifteen minutes I would be phoning Lucy back and telling her I already had a girlfriend, and was very happy with her. I'd love to see her again, catch up with old times, but I was quite resoundingly a done deal.
- Yeah. I want us back together.
I turned over the ticket. Just as I'd suspected, it was for last weeks draw. The sceptical amongst you will say it was always for last weeks draw, getting back together with Bête had nothing to do with it. The sceptical amongst you, as always, will be wrong.
- Oh! Yes! Yes! This is the best day of my life!
Well, Bethany and I were in love. We'd been together a eight months before we split up. In that time there had been no arguments, very little bad air. We spent so much time together, everyone assumed that whenever Bethany cried or I was in a bad mood it was the other's fault. But it wasn't. Quite the reverse. Bethany was a luminescent figure in my often dark, damp word. She told me I was the same. When me and Bethany broke up, it was amicable, and we stayed close friends.
I had a nickname for Bethany. She was my Bête Noire. She was my little black cat. A ray of black light, she was my unlucky charm.
I met her on a rare trip to the bookies. A friend of mine, now a certified gambling addict, was betting on football matches. She, apparently, saw me from outside, and was drawn to me. At the time I was dumbfounded that such a stunning girl would wander in off the street to stand next to me. Now it seems obvious. When she was outside, Michael Owen was in the eighteen yard box, with only the keeper to beat. My ticket was worth £18. The moment she stepped through the threshold of that Ladbrokes our plucky striker had skied the ball, and I was £4 in the hole.
But despite the bad sentiment that this engendered, I saw through it, saw her through it, and fell in love with her straight away. Something in her eyes connected with me. She introduced herself and I smiled in acknowledgement. Bethany and I swapped phone numbers before the ball had even been reset, and by half time we'd arranged our first and second dates. I walked her home, at 5pm, and we were to meet up again, at the cinema, at 7pm.
I missed my bus. Well, I say missed. I was standing by the bus stop, but the driver just didn't seem to see me. When I arrived, the movie I wanted to see - so special was it to me, I'd been waiting until I met someone like Bethany before I even contemplated seeing it - had started twenty minutes ago. Bethany said it was OK, and we watched a romantic comedy that I would have almost certainly hated, had I seen it with anyone except Bethany. Instead, me and she, we mocked the clichés and held hands and stole kisses all the way through the movie. Five minutes before the end, as it was reaching it's loving climax, I chased her out.
The nickname came after the next encounter. Me and Beth (as she had insisted on being called after our first date), on our second time of meeting, went to a gallery, then for a meal. It was only the Custard Factory gallery, which is quite small. She's the artist of the two of us. I prefer algebra. And occasionally integration by parts, but only if I'm in a good mood. I let her wander around the gallery, watched her as she cooed over photographs, falling more in love with each utterance. Then we went to a restaurant, just around the corner. It came to the bill and this one was on me. I put my card on the bill tray, only to be told they didn't accept Switch. Or Visa. Or Solo. Well, obviously not Solo, but still. So I said I'd walk the half mile to a cash point. Just as I stood up, we all heard a crack of lightning. Then rain started knocking on the window as if we'd locked it outside by mistake. I smiled down at Beth. Aren't you just my little black cat, I said. My Bête Noire. She laughed.
I arrived back soaking wet from head to toe. As I walked through the door, she's laughing as though she hadn't stopped since I left. If I didn't love you so much, I told her, I'd be downright scared of you. The name Bête (supposedly pronounced 'Beyt', often mispronounced 'Bet') just stuck from there.
This set the template for our entire relationship. Every time we went anywhere, something bad would happen. Whenever I was in the vicinity of Bête, my pocket-sized blond canister of fizz, it managed to rain on my side of the taxi. I had to arrange important things around her. If I had a job interview, we wouldn't see each other for a few days. If I had to be on time for something, I didn't see her before it. It was like a contraceptive around us, and no matter what we, the plucky reproductive cells, did something found a way to go wrong.
Yet I was amazingly happy with Bête. We had a level of understanding and intimacy that everyone around me seemed to bemoan didn't exist. We shared jokes. We didn't keep secrets. Whenever I was around her, I didn't want to be parted from her.
It was the summer of 2002, and I was sitting at the bottom of my stairs. Bête walks in, and sits beside me. What are you doing, she asks. Waiting for my exam results, I say. At this point the two things don't even register. Bête next to me, my exam results in the postman's hand. They land on the mat. It clicks. We look at each other. The panic in my heart is overwhelming. She, her thin fingers with their light pink nails trembling slightly, picks up the envelope. Sitting beside me again, she begins to open it.
Even in doing this. Even, in all certainty while ruining my future, wasting at least three years of academia, she is beautiful. The dichotomy of her, sitting in front of me, appealing to, dangling from, every heart string I possess, and the letter she is about to read, threatens to tear me in half.
She begins. "Dear Mr Neilstrom, unfortunately-"
I stand up, the calm in my movements and features terrifying her. I kiss her on the forehead, and walk out the door. After a few minutes, she comes to find me. I'm sitting on the curb outside my house, weeping openly into my hands. I will have to retake at least one module next year. I have little enough money as it is, and I can ill-afford to take any more time out of getting a job to redo a whole subject. She sits beside me. As she does a boy on a bike rides past and throws his empty carton of Ribena behind him.
Needless to say, it hits me. Shall we call it a day, she asks, her voice too, openly stoic. I breathe in. I think we should, babe. The 'I love you's that are normally exchanged aren't necessary. It's all to obvious. It's all too heartbreaking.
Yeah, sure, we stayed friends, but I didn't see much of Bête for the next few months. We weren't going out any more, but I still loved her. Things started to go right for me. I won a few times on the old scratchcards. My university wrote to me and said there was an administrative error and I'd got a first. Bête and I laughed weakly about this. A girl I'd fallen in love with back at college, but who was far too good for me, turned up in my life again. She phoned me one night in November. She was a model now. Her name was Lucy. She'd got my number off a mutual friend.
I said I'd call her back.
I sat contemplating the last few months of my life without Bête. I had my hands down the back of the sofa, and felt something papery. It was a lottery ticket. My mother bought them weekly, and had said she'd lost hers for this week. Funnily enough the lottery was on TV at the time. I put it beside me idly and reached for my phone. I dialled out Bête's number. She answered, as happy to hear from me as I was to hear her voice. We talked for about ten minutes, general chit chat. The numbers started to roll.
I'm wondering, Bethany, I said. Forty-two. Hmm, she responded, without that fake disinterest that girls usually used on me at this point. Twenty-nine. I looked at the lottery ticket. Six, eighteen, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-three, forty-two. I swallowed hard.
- I'm wondering, Bethany, if perhaps we weren't a bit quick to end things the last time.
Thirty-three,
- But you remember what it was like, don't you.
six,
- Yes. I remember. I was the happiest person I'd even known me to be. I was in love with the most beautiful, perfect girl I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, and what's more, she loved me enough to put up with me.
thirty-two,
- So, you want us to get back together?
eighteen. Fireworks go off in the studio. We have a winner!
In about fifteen minutes I would be phoning Lucy back and telling her I already had a girlfriend, and was very happy with her. I'd love to see her again, catch up with old times, but I was quite resoundingly a done deal.
- Yeah. I want us back together.
I turned over the ticket. Just as I'd suspected, it was for last weeks draw. The sceptical amongst you will say it was always for last weeks draw, getting back together with Bête had nothing to do with it. The sceptical amongst you, as always, will be wrong.
- Oh! Yes! Yes! This is the best day of my life!