How to self-destruct in 28 days – a user’s manual

It’s been almost a year since House went home. I’ve been wondering – yet again – what to do with the rest of my life. And I’ve decided what I really want to do is write. Which is fortunate since I spend so much time blogging. But, while blogging has been bliss, it’s not financially rewarding. So I’m thinking I might write a book (no money in that either, fool) or a movie script (potentially squillions to be scored but virtually impossible to crack). Writing a book or screenplay are my ultimate fantasy (well, that or a small bar or a stuffed animal shop, I’m still pretty keen on them too). At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Particularly while listening to the one Snow Patrol album that was any good (some of the songs are on my movie’s soundtrack … yep, I’m totally in la-la-land). But there’s just one problem:  I never actually put pen to paper. (How weird is it to be still using that expression when pens so infrequently contact paper these days?) That’s because I’m far too busy blogging to write books or screenplays. But yesterday, I decided to knuckle down and start the book. So I was a bit stuffed this morning when it came to posting something on housegoeshome, because I was completely creatively drained. Then I figured, why not send the book out and see what people think? The central character is quite unpleasant, granted, but it’s a (twisted) rom-com, so she’ll reform herself in the end. Let me know what you think (she winces) … I think perhaps I should have given it more than a day’s work before sending it into the ether … Ah well, too late now. I’m liking the title though …

TITLE: WOULD I LIE TO YOU?
SUB-TITLE: (How to self-destruct in 28 days – a user’s manual)

Chapter One

Monday, March 8.

Is flirting at a funeral wrong? How about shagging a stranger at a wake? I’ve kind of lost perspective. I had my conscience surgically removed years ago. You can’t be the editor of a weekly gossip magazine and have guilt issues, they just slow you down. If I felt remorse every time I eviscerated a celebrity’s private life and left the bloody entrails scattered through the pages of my magazine, well … moving along … I shagged a stranger at a wake. But I couldn’t help myself, he was gorgeous.

He was sitting a pew ahead of me. I was pretty shitty about being at the funeral until I saw him. I mean I don’t even like Toxic Mary and I’d never met her dead mother.

I’ve been avoiding Mary’s calls for weeks – she’s just so … toxic. I have enough negative influences in my life without “friends” trying to bring me down for sport. Toxic Mary uses me as her emotional punching bag, I’m the person who makes her feel better about her crap love life because mine is invariably worse.

The final straw came a month ago, when she invited me to coffee “intervention”, where she gently, constructively inform me I was becoming too self-absorbed and needed to notice that people around me had problems of their own (ie her). Please. We are talking about a woman who regards breaking a false nail as a cause for national mourning.

Granted, her mother has since died, but at the time she was perfectly healthy. It’s not like she’d been wasting away from some terrible disease for months and I hadn’t bothered to enquire about her wellbeing. Well, I’m pretty sure she hadn’t, because Toxic Mary would have been going on about it endlessly if she had.

So I thought I’d finally cut Toxic Mary loose. Then, last Friday, I accidentally answered a call from her. She was sobbing that her mother had died and begging me to come to the funeral. What was I supposed to say? The woman was a choking snot factory. I may be the editor of the country’s most cutthroat celebrity magazine, but I’m not a completely heartless bitch. Well, I am, but I wouldn’t want the newspaper gossip columnists to find out. They’d have a field day.

So now I’m stuck pretending I’m her friend until it’s socially acceptable to cease relations again. What’s the appropriate interval to wait before ditching a friend after their mother dies?

I was busy grinding my teeth over the whole infuriating business when I spotted my gorgeous fellow-mourner in the pew in front. He was your archetypal tall, dark and handsome type in a very fetching charcoal suit and expensive-looking silk tie. He must have felt my eyes caressing the back of his neck because he looked over his shoulder and caught my eye for an outrageously long moment. I felt like I was being slowly undressed. In a church! At a funeral! It was a very sexy moment. I thought to myself, “Hello! This might not be such a bore after all.”

Outside the church, after a decent interval – ooh, at least four minutes – and lots of solemn nodding at grieving relatives, we sidled together and introduced ourselves.

“Hi, I’m Mark. How did you know Isabelle,” he asked.

I stared at him blankly. ‘Who?”

His eyebrows raised slightly.

“Oh, are we referring to er … the deceased? I’m a friend of Tox … I mean, of Mary. What about you?”

“Cousin, actually.”

“I’m so terribly sorry for your loss,” I said, anxiously hoping he hadn’t written me off as an uncaring cow.

“Don’t be, I barely knew her, but my mum really wanted me to come. You know how it is?”

No, I don’t. My family aren’t that close. My grandparents are gone and I can’t even remember the last time I saw a cousin. If I ran into one in a bar, I’d struggle to recognize them. As for my mother, she died when I was 16. A couple of relatives turned up at her funeral, but probably just for the car-crash fascination factor. The funeral was front page news in our local paper – it’s not often people drive themselves off cliffs and drown, so the event had a high novelty factor attached to it.

That was 22 years ago, and I haven’t spoken to any of my relatives since. Well, apart from my dad. If you can call our emotionally stunted verbal exchanges “speaking”.

I figured Mark didn’t need the full download, so I just nodded in what I hoped was an empathetic fashion. I’ve had that gene surgically removed too. You might have noticed that already.

Mark asked if I was going to the wake. I hadn’t planned on it. I was supposed to be back in the office by lunchtime, but it suddenly seemed completely uncaring of me not to raise a glass in Isabelle’s honour. Mark offered me a lift in his car. I ducked over to give Mary a consoling hug. I summoned up my best sympathetic look and told her I’d see her at the wake. She squeezed my arm gratefully.

Mark’s car was very sporty and foreign. I have no idea what model. I can pick a celebrity at 50 paces, even the minor ones on daytime soaps, but machinery defeats me. All I know is he looked extremely fetching behind the wheel with his dark sunnies on. He obviously had money, lots of it. As we drove to Isabelle’s house he told me he was a film producer. I stroked the leather interior of the car in surprise, I didn’t think the film industry was a money-making exercise in Australia. Seems I was wrong. He asked what I did for a living and I told him I was a mag slag. He looked confused, so I explained that I edited Flash magazine. He seemed impressed, which is more than I can say for most of the actors who star in his movies. They refuse to give interviews to Flash, despite it being the biggest-selling magazine in the country. Lots of pathetic whining about us printing blurry photographs of them snogging their co-stars when the cameras aren’t rolling and breaking up their marriages. Hey, if we didn’t buy the shots from the paparazzi photographers, someone else would. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Besides, if they weren’t shagging around in the first place, they wouldn’t have to worry about being sprung by Flash, now would they?

Somehow that argument doesn’t seem to cut it when agents call to scream at me, so Flash has been black-banned by more celebrities than I care to remember. No wonder their boring movies don’t make any money. Australia is too small to be precious and still pay your mortgage.

Around five glasses of red wine and lots of self-justification later, Mark nibbled my ear and whispered that he needed to go to the bathroom … with me. I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no, other than that it might be a bit tacky to have sex in a recently deceased woman’s bathroom, so I said yes.

I went first, he followed. He locked the door, then plunged his tongue into my mouth and his hand down my top. Ooooh, I thought, maybe having sex in Isabelle’s bathroom wasn’t so tacky after all, despite the dolly toilet-roll holder on the loo. Our frenetic coupling felt like it was straight from the pages of one of his movie scripts. You know how sex is never usually like it is on the big screen? Well, this shag almost was. We did it standing up, my legs wrapped around his waist. I was a teensy bit self-conscious about it at first, but when he didn’t collapse in a screaming heap, yelling “my back, argh, my back” after the first 30 seconds, I decided to go with it. Amazing. Best drunken sex ever. And that’s saying something.

I felt a bit like a Wayne Carey groupie when we emerged from the bathroom 15 minutes later, smoothing down our clothes and hoping we didn’t smell too much like sex. Mark offered me a lift back to the city, so we edged through the crowd and said our goodbyes to Toxic Mary. She looked at us a bit suspiciously, but was quickly distracted by the conga line of relatives offering condolences.

As we pulled up outside my building, Mark gave me a kiss on the cheek and said he’d be in touch. I hopped out of the car and waved as he drove off. It occurred to me that he hadn’t asked for my number. But then, he knew where to find me.

I wobbled into the building and waved nonchalantly at the security guards with one hand as I scrabbled in my handbag for my security pass with the other. Pissed and shagged senseless … and it’s only 2.30pm on a Monday. How decadent of me!

As I pushed open the doors to Flash magazine – or more accurately, fell heavily against them – my assistant Lorraine rushed up looking concerned. “Darling, how was the funeral, are you OK?”

“Fantastic, couldn’t be better,” I assured her, before realizing through the haze of alcohol that it probably wasn’t quite the correct response. “Actually, it was pretty rough … do you have any Panadol?” I quickly added.

Lorraine’s momentarily flustered features rearranged themselves into their usual caring, concerned best and she started rifling through her desk for medical supplies. Bless her, she always keeps lots of pain relief on hand for me. I’d be completely lost without Lorraine. She’s something of an anomaly in the youth-worshipping women’s magazine industry. She must be in her late 50s, she hasn’t bought a new item of clothing in at least two decades, wears hideous shoes, and she has one of those shelf-like bosoms that I have to resist resting my head on like a pillow when I’ve had a hard day.

Lorraine has assumed a sort of pseudo-mother role in my life. She takes care of me – collects my dry-cleaning, sorts my mail and makes sure my water jug is full. On the other hand, I don’t know many mothers who check their daughter’s social calendar every morning and pop a can of Diet Coke and a Berocca on their desk after big events. God bless her.

There’s something intensely comforting about watching her bustle around my office in the afternoons, watering the pot plants she’s perched on every available surface, to “clear the toxins out of that nasty air-conditioning”. She chirps to me about her endless array of grandkids while I nod and murmur at appropriate intervals, though I’ve long given up trying to keep track of names, ages and idiocyncracies.

Today, I zoned back in to hear her say, “Darling, I’m not feeling too well this afternoon, would you mind if I left early?”

“Oh no!” I cried. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I might be coming down with the flu,” she sighed.

“Oh dear, I hope you feel better tomorrow.” Because otherwise I might have to answer my own phone.

“I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning, don’t you worry,” she assured me. “I couldn’t leave you on your own.”

“Don’t worry – admin can get me a temp. You shouldn’t come in if you’re not feeling up to it, I’ll be OK. Really.”

Lorraine sighed. We both know I am completely incapable of looking after myself. I don’t even know how to use the photocopier, although I suspect it has something to do with the big green button that says “start”. My philosophy has always been: Don’t learn to use it and someone else will have to do it for you.

“You just go home and get a good night’s sleep, Lorraine, everything will be fine.”

TO BE CONTINUED …